SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
 Page 1       TOP OF DOC
??–???
2004
  
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–25]

HEARING

ON

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005—H.R. 4200

AND

OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION
TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
 Page 2       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

ON
TITLE IV—MILITARY PERSONNEL AUTHORIZATIONS
TITLE V—MILITARY PERSONNEL POLICY
TITLE VI—COMPENSATION AND OTHER PERSONNEL BENEFITS
TITLE VII—HEALTH CARE PROVISIONS

HEARING HELD
MARCH 10, 2004

  
  

  

TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE

JOHN M. McHUGH, New York, Chairman
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
CANDICE MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JIM RYUN, Kansas
EDWARD SCHROCK, Virginia
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
 Page 3       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MADELEINE BORDALLO, Guam

Lynn W. Henselman, Professional Staff Member
Elizabeth McAlpine, Staff Assistant

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2003

HEARING:
    Wednesday, March 10, 2004, Fiscal Year 2005 National Defense Authorization Act—Budget Request on the Adequacy of the Total Force

APPENDIX:
    Wednesday, March 10, 2004

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2004
FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BUDGET REQUEST ON THE ADEQUACY OF THE TOTAL FORCE
 Page 4       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Chairman, Total Force Subcommittee

    Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Ranking Member, Total Force Subcommittee

WITNESSES

    Brown, Lt. Gen. Richard ''Tex'', USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Headquarters, Department of the Air Force

    Cartwright, Lt. Gen. James E., USMC, Director of Force Structure, Resources and Assessment (J8) Joint Chiefs of Staff

    Cody, Lt. Gen. Richard A., USA, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–3, Headquarters, Department of the Army

    Green, Vice Adm. Kevin P., USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations, Headquarters, Department of the Navy

    Hagenbeck, Lt. Gen. Franklin L., USA, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–1, Headquarters, Department of the Army
 Page 5       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Hoewing, Vice Adm. Gerald, USN Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel Headquarters, Department of the Navy

    Huly, Lt. Gen. Jan C., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corp

    McNabb, Lt. Gen. Duncan J., USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Programs, Headquarters, Department of the Air Force

    Parks, Lt. Gen. Garry L., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Headquarters, USMC

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Brown, Lt. Gen. Richard ''Tex''

Cartwright, Lt. Gen. James E.

Cody, Lt. Gen. Richard A., joint with Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck

 Page 6       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
Green, Vice Adm. Kevin P.

Hoewing, Vice Adm. Gerald

McNabb, Lt. Gen. Duncan J.

Mr. McHugh

Parks, Lt. Gen. Garry L., joint with Lt. Gen. Jan C., Huly

Dr. Snyder

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Mr. Cooper
Dr. Gingrey
Dr. Snyder

FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BUDGET REQUEST ON THE ADEQUACY OF THE TOTAL FORCE

 Page 7       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Total Force Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 10, 2004.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:03 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John McHugh (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK, CHAIRMAN, TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE

    Mr. MCHUGH. The subcommittee will come to order.

    Let me welcome you all and state that this subcommittee has for several years now been in possession of deep concerns about the potential inadequacy of military manpower levels to meet the full range of requirements of the nation's military strategy.

    Given those concerns, we have moved in each of the last 2 years, on the House side, to increase active manpower authorizations over the levels requested in the original budget.

    Furthermore, we have also urged the Department of Defense and the military services to finish the numerous manpower-related studies and analyses efforts and get on with the business of implementing changes to address the shortfalls of military capability, force structure and manpower.
 Page 8       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I guess the adage ''Be careful of what you wish for'' is an appropriate one today. We asked, pushed and probed DOD and the military services to begin the process of change.

    And, as I think will be evidenced by the testimony we will hear today, there has been an explosion of change across the services. It is both staggering in scope and complexity given the context within which it will have to take place.

    That context today, and for the foreseeable future, is that each of the military services is simultaneously being required to carry out four different missions.

    First, fight the global war on terrorism, which in part has become a challenge to sustain, over an extended period, a deployed force in excess of 100,000 personnel.

    Second, reset and reconstitute forces returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and maintain the readiness, capability and manpower to perform the full range of military functions, other than the global war on terrorism, required by that national military strategy.

    Third, shed Cold War processes, and structure and transform itself to meet current and future requirements.

    And fourth, sustain the viability of the all-volunteer total force, active, guard and reserve, in a wartime environment that portends high operations and personnel tempos for years to come.
 Page 9       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Furthermore, in the case of two of the military services, the Navy and the Air Force, efforts are under way to reduce manpower levels.

    To successfully achieve change within the isolated context of any one of the requirements that I just mentioned would present significant challenges for any service. Attempting successful change while doing all of these missions simultaneously will be an exceedingly difficult undertaking.

    Indeed, the subcommittee's intent during this hearing is to examine service proposals for change and reform that impact all of these requirements.

    We would want very much to assess not only what changes each service is undertaking, but how well the services are progressing.

    Clearly the subcommittee is also concerned with assessing the adequacy of the current and future programmed military manpower and force structure in the total force and the ability to provide and sustain the full range of capabilities required by the national military and national security strategy.

    Ultimately, the subcommittee will have to make decisions about supporting or modifying the various service and DOD manpower initiatives.

    So today's hearing is an opportunity for the joint staff and the service's witnesses to convince us, to enlighten us as to why their plans make sense for improving the adequacy of our military services.
 Page 10       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And before I introduce our first panel of very distinguished witnesses, let me yield to my partner in this process, and all processes, the gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. McHugh can be viewed in the hard copy.]

STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, RANKING MEMBER, TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Appreciate you all being here today for both panels. As you know, this has been a big issue before this committee.

    And Mr. Chairman, you know, we get this memo that the committee staff puts together.

    Did you write this, John? I understand you and then Debra reviewed it; I thought this was excellent.

    Mr. MCHUGH. What makes you think I didn't write it? [Laughter.]

    Dr. SNYDER. I thought this was an excellent piece of work here that had some clarity to it that we are not used to.
 Page 11       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I thought it was really good. I hope you all had a chance to read it too because I thought it really put together the whole issue.

    And I know John did a lot of the work, or did most of the work, and Debra reviewed it.

    But I was just going to read this one issue because I think you all are familiar with the attitude of a lot of members of the committee. And this is on the third page of this.

    It just says, ''There is no doubt that active and Reserve component manpower is now and has been for some time inadequate to meet and sustain the full range of capabilities required of and missions assigned to the armed forces. The war in Iraq has highlighted those inadequacies.''

    I mean, the given, I think, for a lot of members of this committee is that things are not right now.

    And so we look forward to hearing your thoughts about that perspective, but also a lot of the changes that you all are working on.

    So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the afternoon.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be viewed in the hard copy.]
 Page 12       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman, as always, for his, not just participation, but his leadership.

    And I couldn't agree more with his observation about the terrific work that the staff does in preparing for these hearings and for presenting us with the memos and background papers that help prepare us.

    Let me, as I said, welcome our first panel of witnesses, the first of two. And let me introduce them as they are written here on the page. First, Lieutenant General James Cartwright, United States Marine Corps, Director of Force Structure, Resources and Assessment, J–8 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Welcome, General.

    Lieutenant General Richard A. Cody, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–3, Headquarters, Department of the Army. General, welcome.

    Lieutenant General Franklin L. Hagenbeck, Buster Hagenbeck, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–1, Headquarters, Department of the Army. Buster, welcome.

    Vice Admiral Kevin P. Green, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations, Headquarters, Department of the Navy. Admiral, welcome.

    And Vice Admiral Gerald Hoewing, Chief of Navy Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel, Headquarters, Department of the Navy. Admiral, welcome. Good to see you again.
 Page 13       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    This is the first opportunity for a number of you, in fact most of you, to testify before this committee, although I certainly have had the opportunity and the pleasure to work with a number of you in other contexts in the past.

    And I want to welcome you all.

    I have to say, General, a special word of welcome to a good friend and outstanding soldier, a great leader, Buster Hagenbeck.

    Last time General Hagenbeck and I were together, other than his change-of-command ceremony, where he left Fort Drum, where he was the proud commander of the 10th Mountain Division, was having a cigar at K2 in Uzbekistan as he awaited such challenging assignments as Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda and others.

    And good to see you again.

    General HAGENBECK. Thank you, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. We thank you all, gentlemen, for your service and for the opportunity that you have provided us to be enlightened by your positions here today.

    And if I may, according to the protocol that has been presented to me, General Cartwright, as the one joint staff representative, we would appreciate hearing from you here, first of all.
 Page 14       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    If you could begin, we are anxious and interested in your testimony, sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT, USMC, DIRECTOR OF FORCE STRUCTURE, RESOURCES AND ASSESSMENT (J8) JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

    General CARTWRIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Snyder.

    And we will try not to sell; we will try to inform this debate.

    But along those lines, we have had considerable interaction with your staffs and with the members in trying to inform this debate. And that is what we hope to continue to do today.

    As you know, our joint forces are globally engaged in the prosecution of the defense strategy and the global war on terrorism.

    A significant number of forces remain committed to on-going operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We still have forces in Kosovo, Bosnia and in support of the multinational forces in the Sinai. Forces are conducting forward deterrence roles in the Pacific and Europe.

    Additionally, forces participate in operations in South and Central America. And we recently committed forces to a multinational effort in Haiti.
 Page 15       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I know there is significant concern about the adequacy of the force to sustain our current level of global engagement. In sum, we think our force is adequately sized.

    However, we must recognize and reorganize the force in order to mitigate risks associated with sustaining our current level of commitments over the long term. Reorganization is under way.

    The modularization of the Army will increase the number of available combat brigades. The Air Force will continue to manage its rotation base through its air expeditionary force construct.

    While the Marines reorganize around expeditionary strike groups, the Navy will form expeditionary strike forces to better manage the rotational base.

    All of these efforts will reduce stress on our active and reserve forces and enable us to sustain global commitments.

    The emergency end-strength authorizations approved by the Secretary of Defense will mitigate force management risks during our reorganization.

    However, as our reorganization efforts take effect, it is unlikely these temporary end-strength authorizations will be required to sustain this global tempo.

    The services are taking additional actions to reduce stress on the force. The services will realign the active and the reserve mix of the forces.
 Page 16       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And to maximize our use of human resources, ensuring military personnel are used to perform tasks that are militarily essential, the services will convert military positions to civil or contractor positions.

    In sum, our total force is adequately sized, but we need to reorganize in order to enable the department to maintain this level of commitment over the long term.

    The emergency end-strength authorizations mitigate force management risks while we complete our reorganization initiatives.

    Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity and I stand ready for your questions.

    [The prepared statement of General Cartwright can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, General.

    I should note for the record, we have all of the gentlemen's written testimony in their entirety. And without objection, all of those will be entered in their entirety to the record.

    And I appreciate, General Cartwright, your summation of your testimony and would respectfully encourage the other panelists to do the best they can, although we are most interested in all you have to say.
 Page 17       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Our next witness is Lieutenant General Richard Cody, United States Army.

    General, we are yours for the next however many minutes you take, sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. RICHARD CODY, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, G–3, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

    General CODY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Good afternoon, Congressman Snyder.

    Distinguished members of the committee, we appreciate the opportunity, and it is our privilege today to appear before you to discuss the Army's plan to meet our current sustained engagements around the world, while simultaneously transforming to a more flexible, more capable and more joint expeditionary force of the future.

    We know many of you have visited our deployed soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and we thank the members of the committee for their continued outstanding support for the men and women in uniform that make up our great Army.

    The 333,000 soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and in another 120 countries around the world remain committed to meeting the requirements of our national security strategy.
 Page 18       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    For the past 2.5 years our Army has been decisively engaged executing the global war on terrorism at home and abroad. Almost every active component division has been deployed or will deploy to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) by the end of fiscal year 2004.

    Our reserve component has been equally engaged with a cumulative mobilization of over 46 percent of the total Army Reserve component since September 2001.

    During the current transition of our forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, 8 of the Army's 10 active duty divisions and more than 120 Reserve component soldiers will be moving in and out of the Central Command theater in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    This massive transition of forces is the largest movement of the Army since World War II.

    It has involved seamless coordination with our joint partners from the United States Air Force, the Navy and United States Marine Corps, and has optimized the capacity at our 15 Continental United States (CONUS)-based power projection platforms and our 12 power support platforms.

    Our nation and our Army are at war. Our current worldwide commitments have highlighted stresses to our forces that have existed for some time.

 Page 19       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    As General Cartwright referenced in his statement, the Army has embarked on a series of initiatives to mitigate this risk through increased land power capability.

    I had the opportunity to brief you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this committee in February on these initiatives.

    We have detailed our programs to meet the Army's future global commitments in my formal statement for the record. And I look forward to your questions.

    [The joint prepared statement of General Cody and General Hagenbeck can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, General. We appreciate it.

    Next, Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck, United States Army?

    Buster, welcome. Our attention is yours, sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. FRANKLIN HAGENBECK, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, G–1, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

    General HAGENBECK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for those kind words of introduction.

 Page 20       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Mr. Snyder and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss our manning strategy to meet current and future commitments.

    Current historical events have accelerated the Chief of Staff of the Army's initiatives to transform the Army.

    And from a manning perspective, we will transform with three initiatives: rebalancing, stabilization and conversion.

    Efforts to transform the Army through rebalancing our active and reserve components, stabilization of our active duty forces and converting civilian spaces to allow more soldiers to forward deploy units makes our Army more relevant and ready to operate in a joint expeditionary environment, and prepares us for future contingencies.

    Finally, as you know, the Army's goal is to temporarily increase our active duty strength by 30,000 soldiers.

    And we will accomplish this by increasing our recruiting and retention levels to maintain our quality force. However, to achieve the required temporary increase, the Army will continue to need broad incentive packages to shape our force.

    The soldier is our most critical asset. And our success as an Army and a nation depends on your continued support.

 Page 21       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    So once again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and I look forward to answering your questions.

    [The joint prepared statement of General Hagenbeck and General Cody can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, General.

    Next, Vice Admiral Kevin P. Green, United States Navy?

    Admiral, welcome.

STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. KEVIN P. GREEN, USN, DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR PLANS, POLICY AND OPERATIONS, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

    Admiral GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Snyder, distinguished members of the committee, it is truly an honor and a personal pleasure to be here before you today.

    And I am pleased to support that our Navy is performing superbly in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and in our other commitments in operations around the world.

    Mr. Chairman, the global war on terrorism requires this nation to have a naval force that is more ready and more responsive.
 Page 22       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We can no longer rely upon our past focus of rigid rotational deployments and lead to the presence based on days in theater. Instead, the naval force of today must be both forward where necessary, as well as capable of surging substantial forces anywhere in the world on short notice.

    This can only be accomplished with a complete transformation of our readiness process.

    As we meet here this afternoon, our Navy is forward deployed with 84 ships underway, including 2 carrier strike groups, 2 expeditionary strike groups, 1 surface action group and 29 ships homeported overseas and forward deployed.

    Additionally, there are 66 ships and submarines underway conducting homeland security missions, counter-drug patrols, goodwill visits, multinational exercises and predeployment training.

    This level of effort is vital to sustaining the war on terrorism, assuring friends and allies and leading the nation's global response to crisis.

    This current level of readiness cannot be sustained without the implementation of the fleet response plan (FRP).

    The fleet response plan is one of our most important transformational programs, based upon our belief that in order to defeat the threats of today we must place a premium on ready, flexible forces able to pulse rapidly either to augment forward-deployed forces or respond to crisis in remote and widely separated locations.
 Page 23       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    In doing so, we must adjust the way the fleet is manned, maintained, trained and sustained. In order to transform the fleet, we have affected two significant changes.

    First, the Navy has created a culture of readiness.

    No longer is the Navy focused solely upon the months leading up to a deployment. Instead, all our maintenance, training and manning is focused upon attaining surge capability.

    Second, we need to establish new readiness and surge thresholds. These thresholds have now been established.

    As implemented, the fleet response plan now resets the force in a way that will allow us to surge about 50 percent more combat power on short notice, and at the same time potentially reduce some of the personnel strain of forward rotations.

    The FRP fundamentally changes the way we operate our fleet and, when coupled with our strategy to recruit, develop and retain the most highly skilled and educated personnel, will continue to ensure our Navy is the most capable and flexible fighting force in the world.

    Further, our efforts to rebalance the active and reserve components is providing us the necessary forces to react to any crisis without the need for immediate reserve mobilization and providing our leadership with increased options in the execution of our national security strategy.
 Page 24       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. Chairman, I stand ready and pleased to try to answer your questions. Thank you for this opportunity.

    [The prepared statement of Admiral Green can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, sir.

    Our next presenter is Vice Admiral Gerald Hoewing, United States Navy, Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel.

    Admiral, it is good to see you again.

STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. GERALD HOEWING, USN, CHIEF OF NAVAL PERSONNEL AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

    Admiral HOEWING. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Snyder and distinguished members of the subcommittee, once again, it is an honor to be here to have the opportunity to discuss the adequacy of the Navy's total force with you today.

    And particularly on behalf of all those exceptional men and women out there, I would like to thank you all for the wonderful support that you have provided them that gives them the quality of life, the quality of service and the opportunity to serve in our Navy today.
 Page 25       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I am going to shorten to the issues today, and that is, I want you to know that we have higher-quality recruits than we have had in recent years coming into the Navy.

    We have historic high reenlistment rates. We have innovative incentive programs that are largely, in fact, totally the result of members of this Congress. Our attrition is the lowest we have seen in many, many years.

    And we have outstanding leadership out there. And as a result of that, our fleet is more capable and talented today than we have seen in many, many years.

    How are we doing that? We are investing in technology. We are developing affordable, next-generation ships, aircraft and submarines.

    And these platforms are being designed so that they maximize the performance of our sailors, while reducing the number of sailors on those platforms in order to complete the missions.

    And as these new platforms are being developed, we are decommissioning the older, legacy platforms that are burdened with manpower intensive systems.

    The result, then, is a more capable Navy comprised of fewer but more talented people. And that is why we are confident in proposing for fiscal year 2005 an end-strength reduction of 7,900 active personnel.

 Page 26       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Our approach to doing this is built on three mutually supportive tasks.

    First, we are determining the true manpower requirements.

    We are assessing the relevance of every task that is taking place out there, and determining if that task can better be done by an active, reserve, civilian person; a total force approach.

    And we are identifying those positions that are no longer relevant because of the technology investments and because of the organizational and operational changes, some of which Admiral Green has already mentioned.

    Second, we are shaping the force to better meet those requirements.

    Last year we launched a new program called ''Perform to Serve'' that has already resulted in the conversion of nearly 2,500 sailors from overmanned skill sets into undermanned skill sets.

    We also continue to refine our Selective Reenlistment Bonus program which is extremely important as we shape in very narrowly around those skill sets that are the most difficult to retain and have the most technical education and learning in order to prepare.

    And we would also like to thank you for the assignment incentive pay initiative that you allowed us to demonstrate this year where we literally have hundreds of sailors taking orders to critical billets where we need them the most.
 Page 27       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Third, we are continuing the development of our human capital management system called Sea Warrior.

    And it integrates the functions of manpower, personnel and training, puts them all together so that we can link force-shaping, end-strength management and work force development tools all at the same time.

    So, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, let me thank you and the committee once again for your extraordinary support of our men and women in uniform.

    And your support and guidance will continue to maintain that high quality and prepare us to meet the challenges of this century. Thank you, sir.

    [The prepared statement of Admiral Hoewing can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, Admiral.

    Thank you all.

    Let me just ask one general question of the Army and then I am going to yield to my colleagues. We have a turnout here today and I want to make sure they have an opportunity to ask their questions.

 Page 28       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    A lot of talk about 30,000 men and women in uniform; it is the number that has been appended to the added brigades in the new formulation.

    It is the number that both the Senate has proposed in a Senator Reed-Senator Hagel bill that Secretary Rumsfeld addressed in a press conference, I believe, yesterday.

    It is the number that some of our House colleagues have suggested in a different time frame. And it is the number that has been authorized for a temporary expansion by the Secretary of Defense.

    Can we make the assumption that, if directed to do so, the Army could increase its end-strength number by 30,000 in a single year?

    And if not, what is the practical number? But if you were challenged to maximize the number of new men and women in the end-strength formula, what is the reasonable, maximum amount you could add in a single year, General Cody or General Hagenbeck?

    General CODY. Let me take the first swing at it while Buster collects his thoughts.

    As you know, we think that from this year out to 2007, we can grow the Army by 30,000.

    Sir, we think we can do that by increasing our accessions growth from 74,000 a year that we recruit now, up to 80,000 and retention grows about 7,000 over 2005 and 2006.
 Page 29       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So we would attack it from accessions as well as increasing our retention.

    As you know, right now we have stop-loss in effect. And we are about 10,000 soldiers above the National Defense Appropriation Act of 482,400.

    And so our strategy is; lead with about 5,000 to 6,000 to 7,000 a year for the next 4 years in accessions, 2 years worth of retention growth of about 7,000 and we think that is how we can grow the Army.

    When you take a look at our training base, as well as the number of brigades and divisions we have in combat or redeploying, we think we can handle that.

    Buster.

    General HAGENBECK. I would just underscore that the numbers, obviously, we agree upon.

    Anything more than 5,000 or 6,000 additional accessions per year will cost significant amounts of money to expand our training bases at a variety of locations.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you.

    And General Cody gave an excellent briefing, that he mentioned just a few weeks ago on the new plan to do the modular brigades and to add 10 brigades. But we are talking about three brigades in the first wave.
 Page 30       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Is that correct?

    General CODY. Yes, sir. What we plan on, we are building the 4th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division right now.

    We plan on building two more brigades this year, by the end of fourth quarter this year. And they will be in the 101st and the 10th Mountain Division.

    And then the following year, we have three more brigades followed by four more brigades in 2006. And then we will make a decision. That will get us the 10 brigades.

    And then we will make a decision in 2006 and have to report back to Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as to whether the 30,000 that built the first 10 brigades, whether we can restructure our Army in such a way to start letting that 30,000 growth come back down, or we can continue to build the last five brigades.

    That is the strategy right now, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. A question on fiscal year 2005: adding the three brigades, what is the current estimate of that cost?

    And what are the components of that cost, Operation and Maintenance (O&M), personnel, et cetera?

 Page 31       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General CODY. We think it is about $2.9 billion in fiscal year 2005. Some of that is residual because we are starting late and it's residual personnel costs from 2004.

    But that is about $570 million for manning, about $2 billion for equipping, because the first brigade that we build is an armor brigade, so there is more equipping there, and then about $106 million for the training and about $85 million for facilities.

    And then the additional operational and support costs are about $157 million. So it comes just shy of $3 billion for 2005, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much.

    Dr. Snyder.

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, gentlemen, for your statements and your testimony.

    General Cartwright, you heard me read Mr. Chapla's statement about the inadequacy of the forces. And in your written statement, you specifically say, ''Our forces are adequately sized.''

    When you make that statement, ''our forces are adequately sized,'' does that include approximately 36,000 troops that are above the current authorized end-strength? Is that how we reach a definition of adequacy?
 Page 32       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General CARTWRIGHT. There are two components there. There is the force that we have and then the delta that is greater than the end-strength of 30-some thousand that you are referring to.

    In my reference, the question of the additional strength is one of the rate at which you want to be able to transform.

    And in this case, the Army looked at what it would take in order to transform as quickly as possible, because that relieves the stress as quickly as possible. They came up with a number of about 30,000.

    In the case of the Air Force in particular, their number was a direct result of what it took in order to accomplish the war fight. So a different approach to the number that is a delta above.

    Their number was between 16,000 and 19,000 at different points in time.

    Each of the services took a different approach to what that delta was, so one characterization is not probably adequate.

    But clearly it took that additional force to affect this conflict and to get the transformation going as quickly as possible.

    Dr. SNYDER. So we are all in agreement then that the statutory end-strength number, that actual number of people, is not adequate.
 Page 33       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General CARTWRIGHT. As a characterization of that number, which is one day, one snapshot out of the year——

    Dr. SNYDER. Well, no, the end-strength number is not a snapshot. That is written in statute. It is a——

    General CARTWRIGHT. That is correct, for the last day of the fiscal year.

    Dr. SNYDER. It is a number. So as far as this day right now, that number is not adequate because your definition of adequacy is what each service has done through the emergency measures to go beyond that.

    General CARTWRIGHT. I think that each of the services would tell you that if they were asked to do it without those additional end-strengths, with the emergency authorities, that they could accomplish their mission.

    Dr. SNYDER. That they could?

    General CARTWRIGHT. They could.

    Dr. SNYDER. Well now, what you are telling me is, it is adequate with 36,000 and it is adequate without 36,000.

 Page 34       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General CARTWRIGHT. Again, the question that you have to ask is, at the rate at which you want to accomplish change, what day do you want to measure that on for the statutory piece, and then what is necessary to accomplish the mission?

    I think that the services will tell you that they could have accomplished the mission at the end-strength caps. But we had the emergency authority that allowed us to grow.

    And where it was necessary and where we wanted to target that growth, the services did that.

    Dr. SNYDER. Well, I guess I won't pursue that. But on what did you base this definition of adequacy? And I think that was kind of a confusing answer.

    General Cody, on the stop-loss issue, when we hear the numbers, which I think a lot of both the press and the members have followed, retention and recruitment, but when we follow the retention numbers and we think retention is pretty good, does that include stop-loss?

    Do the retention reports include the stop-loss numbers?

    General CODY. Sir, let me pass that to General Hagenbeck, he keeps those figures.

    Dr. SNYDER. Okay, yes. I am sorry; I should address that to you, General.
 Page 35       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General HAGENBECK. Sir, there are two different accounting methods.

    And one, obviously, is the retention across the active components and the reserve components and that is one piece of it. And embedded in that, obviously is a part of the stop-loss numbers.

    As you well know, we had stop-loss that began during Operation Iraqi Freedom I. It came off last May and we reinstated it in October.

    The primary purpose for the reinstitution the second time and why we looked potentially in the future to have focused or limited stop-losses is not directly linked to our total number or end-strength at this juncture.

    It is toward the focus that our chief has directed for unit stabilization and unit-focused training. That is to build teams for a period of time for deployment into a combat theory. They go as a team and come back together.

    So until we reach the steady state that General Cody has addressed through these initiatives of our chief, we are going to have to look at some of the stop-losses on a very small scale.

    And I am sure you got those numbers.

 Page 36       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Since 9/11, the total number has just exceeded 44,000 on stop-loss at any given time. That is about 11 percent or so of all of the forces that we have had activated or mobilized, plus our active duty over time.

    Dr. SNYDER. I understand all of that.

    It is just that, you know, when I ask somebody about retention and they say, ''So far, our numbers look good,'' which is what I am being reported, is that accurate? But it does include stop-loss, which is——

    General HAGENBECK. Yes, sir, but it doesn't include the aggregate necessarily, because everyone that is stop-lossed, it could mean that they were getting ready to retire or to leave the service.

    And our numbers historically have been one-third of those individuals that are in that category, when they come off of that, reenlist.

    And so, the snapshot in and of itself doesn't tell the whole story.

    Dr. SNYDER. I got you.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank the gentleman.

 Page 37       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Next I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey, chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Mr. Saxton.

    Mr. SAXTON. It is a big title. [Laughter.]

    General Cartwright, I will ask you this question that you may want to refer to General Cody.

    Some time ago I got interested in the subject of transformation, and I find it quite intriguing. And I have had conversations with the Secretary of Defense about it and with the chief.

    And I didn't realize what a huge and complicated undertaking it is to make the kinds of changes you are making. And I have the utmost hope that everything will work out as intended.

    I was reminded by a friend of mine this morning that in important jobs like this failure is not an option. And I know that you know that.

    There are several points of discussion as to the size of the brigade combat teams and the makeup of them and the way they will end up operating. And let me just throw out this question.

    It is contended by some that in order to have effective brigade combat teams, we need on average 5,000 people.
 Page 38       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Why is that wrong? Why is that not so?

    General CARTWRIGHT. I will allow the Army to take on the issue of the individual number, but from a standpoint of this transformation activity, and how to go at a question like that, one of the things that all of the services, and certainly from a joint perspective, is an approach that deals in this capabilities-based activity.

    And we never walk away from the fact that there is threat-based planning; we have to do that. There is also what you all have to do, which is matching the resources to the requirements on the dollar-side of that equation.

    And then there is this capabilities-based planning that basically accepts the fact that you don't necessarily know what tomorrow is going to bring, that there isn't just one threat out there that you can point at and then structure yourself and either anticipate their move or react to it.

    And so the force has to be broadened in its skill set to ensure that we don't run into an issue of an item of regret that this nation can't stand.

    And so it means that we have to broaden out the capabilities and skill sets of the force in general, A.

    And B, it also means that there is not just one enemy.

 Page 39       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    So in the case of a carrier that leaves port, it has to be able to turn left or right and be able to perform either way it goes. It has to be the same for the modularity construct for the Army.

    And so, in doing that, the services are looking at: ''What do I need to do to increase the potency of that force when I deploy it, to increase the options for the nations because I don't necessarily know what I am going to go up against both tomorrow and in 10 years into our future?''

    And so, when we start to look at the specific number, particularly from the joint perspective, we allow the services to get to that detail, but what we are looking for and how we grade their homework is: what is the broadness of that capability that you are going to field?

    And what is the usability of it?

    And I will turn it over to the Army at that point.

    General CODY. We have trained you well. [Laughter.]

    Thank you, sir, for that question.

    We have heard that criticism.

    And in fact, we have embarked upon going more modular and taking our seven brigade designs that we have currently in the Army and going to a Stryker brigade design, an infantry brigade design and an armor model design.
 Page 40       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So we are going from seven to three to give us more of that modularity for that joint expeditionary piece that we have to get to.

    So we built our models around getting the best and the brightest critics, guys who think we ought to have 5,000-man brigades. We have some people in academia.

    We went down to our division commanders and our brigade commanders and battalion commanders that have been fighting this war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we went to the other think tanks.

    And what our modeling has shown us is about the right size for an armor brigade is about 3,800 people. And what we did was we said, ''Okay, what should those battalions inside there look like?''

    Right now our battalions inside our mechanized and armor formations are three companies. That is what we had prior to the war.

    We are resetting the 3rd Infantry Division in an armor brigade design where each battalion has four companies.

    And then to leverage the joint in expeditionary joint forces, because we know this brigade will never fight by itself, we said, ''What is more important to us, rather than having a third maneuver battalion?'' What is more important is to have a reconnaissance-surveillance-target acquisition squadron.
 Page 41       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We learned that from Stryker.

    And so that is a maneuver unit that has three maneuver troops in it. And that will leverage all of the forces that we have that we embed inside that brigade as well as all of the joint forces.

    We have modeled this very carefully, and we have come up with what we think is really the right design. It is about 3,800 for an armor unit. And for an infantry unit, it is about 3,300 soldiers.

    What this really does for us, though, is it enables us to take what used to be in the divisions and echelon-above division, and it allows us to restructure the combat service support and combat support elements so that we can sustain these forces across the battlefield and have a much more modular piece to it.

    One example I will give you. Right now, we have the 82nd Airborne Division in the western corridor. General Chuck Swannack commands that division. It is a light division.

    He has one light brigade from his organization. He has a brigade of heavy from Fort Riley, Kansas, out of 1st Infantry Division. And then he has the huge 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Carson.

    Our combat service support structure across our Army has never been sized for that type of modularity. And so that is why we have gone back and said, ''We will build a modular brigade combat team.''
 Page 42       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Now, when we do this, if we put a new brigade combat team out there and we decide that we need more combat force, because it is so modular and because we designed the combat service support structure to handle it, we can plug in another battalion very easily.

    And now you move that unit up to 4,800.

    So the modularity allows you to plug and play and give you more force adaptability.

    Mr. SAXTON. And just my position sitting here, I buy into what you say about the modularity and the opportunity to structure the force you need for whatever fight it is.

    You said one thing that I am curious about.

    It is my understanding that the brigade combat teams are being structured so they can fight alone. And you just said that the armored brigade would never fight alone, I think. I think that is what I heard you say.

    General CODY. Always fight as part of a joint force.

    In other words, I can think of very few scenarios where we would put down an Army brigade without having our friends from the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy providing Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets, joint force assets and other combat power.
 Page 43       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And so when we built the risk to squadron, each one of them, it is designed to leverage that, and our forces effect cells inside that are designed to leverage that.

    Mr. SAXTON. There may be a semantic difference, but in previous briefings and hearings that we have had, we have been briefed that in fact these brigade combat teams are being structured so they can go fight alone.

    And I may have misunderstood somewhere along the line.

    General CODY. What that means sir, right now, what we have to do is, if we send them out there, like when we sent the 3rd Brigade and the 101st when I was a Commanding General (CG) there and gave it to Buster, we had to take elements of the divisions, other combat support and combat service support battalions, and plug them into that brigade to make it robust enough to sustain itself.

    Our design now designs it around that, and we take the best sustainable combat support and combat service support and embed it inside that brigade combat team. So that is what makes it self-sustainable from the Army perspective.

    Mr. SAXTON. Okay, so the plan is not necessarily to have a brigade that is always together, but depending on where they are going, and what they are going to do, and what their mission is, components would be plugged in, as you put it, or added to the brigade combat team in order to carry out whatever function to reach whatever goal we want them to reach.
 Page 44       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General CODY. No, sir. The brigades that we are building right now in the 3rd Infantry Division will absolutely have the Military Police (MP)s, the signal, the fire support, the intelligence, all of that embedded inside of that brigade in support of the two maneuver brigades and reconnaissance squadron.

    It will all be one entity.

    And that is what makes it self-sustaining. It will not require a division base to sustain it. Very similar to what we did with the Stryker brigades, sir.

    Mr. SAXTON. And, Mr. Chairman, if I may just indulge you for one more minute, now the combat brigade teams will be part and parcel of a division.

    What will be the relationship between the division headquarters and the brigade combat teams?

    General CODY. The division headquarters as we build them into a joint task force-capable headquarters.

    And as we build these brigade combat teams, the flag of the divisions, the 10 divisions, become less important, but what becomes more important is the brigade combat teams.

    So it will be a command-and-control headquarters that fights the tactical and operational portion of the fight.
 Page 45       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We can take brigade combat teams from any one of the divisions, and put it under any one of these division headquarters.

    They will have a joint capability as well as the capability of commanding and controlling in combat up to five to six of these brigade combat teams.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no further questions at this time.

    Thank you, General Cody.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank the gentleman.

    The gentlelady from California, Ms. Sanchez?

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    And thank you, gentlemen, for being before us today to testify.

    I have a question with respect to some of the events that have been taking place in Iraq, in particular the ones that involve Iraqi civilians. We saw one, for example, that took 180 lives which was just last week.

    And on February 1st, we saw another with the Kurds in Irbil, which killed 109 people. And it makes me think about the escalating sectarianism that is going on out there in Iraq.
 Page 46       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And then I read these press reports that talk about how our intelligence agencies and our intelligence community here in the United States sees a danger, or signs, pointing toward a real possibility of civil war in Iraq within the next six months.

    So my question has to do with how prepared we are for that particular scenario. Are we postured to meet that contingency or would it require additional United States troop deployment?

    Do you have plans for contingency if Iraq does go into a civil war situation? I mean, how we are going to handle that with respect to troop strength?

    How would the Army, in particular, meet contingencies that called for substantial force increases in Iraq in the next six months?

    Is there a rapid augmentation plan for the troops that we already have there?

    And I guess I would start with, you know, what units do we have ready to go in case we do get ourselves into a civil war situation in Iraq?

    General CARTWRIGHT. I will go ahead and start and then let others join in.

    First, given the level of this hearing, probably going down to the unit level and discussion of plans is somewhat problematic.
 Page 47       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But it is fair to characterize the activity out there as there as a window coming with the constitutional change in the end of June and early July that certainly we are watching carefully.

    And we believe, as I think you heard from General Abizaid when he was here, that we have the right force in place to handle the foreseeable contingencies that we think are plausible.

    We also——

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Is one of those contingencies that you think are plausible a civil war situation?

    General CARTWRIGHT. There is certainly one that would address the fact that there could be a substantial amount of chaos, that there could be conflict between different tribes or different sects within the country.

    And, yes, we are watching very carefully both from the——

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Talk to me about where your troops are coming from, what you are thinking of if that happens. That is really the basis of my question.

    General CARTWRIGHT. Again, I would be happy to sit down and go to detail with you in anther forum, but to talk specific units that are associated with the contingency would not be appropriate here.
 Page 48       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But we are happy to stay later and have a different session on that and get the right people up here to talk from that perspective.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So are you telling me, okay, if you can't talk specific units and who is going in, if we have a scenario like that that we have the men and women power right now to be able to handle that situation?

    General CARTWRIGHT. Yes. We have that in our capability.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Do you foresee, if there were a situation like that, of needing more troops than the troops that we have already in Iraq?

    General CARTWRIGHT. We will leave that to the operational commander. If he requested more forces, we would provide more forces.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. And you believe that you have them?

    General CARTWRIGHT. Yes.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay.

    This one, Mr. Chairman, if you will indulge me a little bit is a little off of this, but I want to take advantage of the fact that—is it Lieutenant General Hagenbeck?
 Page 49       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General HAGENBECK. Yes, madam.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Did you, in the past, just recent past, command the 10th out in Afghanistan?

    General HAGENBECK. Yes, I did. [Laughter.]

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Well, Mr. Chairman. You know, we are reading a lot and we are seeing a lot, and as the ranking woman on the committee for HASC, I have seen a lot in the newspapers and dealing a lot with the issue of sexual assaults out in theater.

    So my question to you, as a commander out in one of those theaters, is can you walk me through what happens when a woman is raped in that situation and a situation out there? And what do we have in support?

    Because I can't seem to get it out of others who really don't know what is going on on the ground. So I am hoping you can enlighten me about what is the process you think is in place out there as a commanding officer.

    General HAGENBECK. Well, I can speak from the Army perspective. And I would also say that during my tenure, I was never apprised of any such situations that arose in Afghanistan.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. How long were you there in Afghanistan?
 Page 50       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General HAGENBECK. Initially, I was there for 11 months and then I went back this past summer for three more months; so a 14-month period of time.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So in a 14-month period of time, you never had one of these sexual assaults occur out there in Afghanistan?

    General HAGENBECK. Not that was brought to my attention.

    We had some sexual misconduct incidents that arose, which resulted in appropriate justice brought to bear, but not any rapes that were——

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So as the commanding officer, what do you assume sits out there in Afghanistan for a woman who had been raped out there in the theater?

    General HAGENBECK. Well, first of all, for soldiers, Army soldiers, we have an educational program that begins at basic training and goes through all the way to unit level which talks about and teaches from sexual harassment and touches on, obviously, sexual assault, which is a criminal offense, and outlines to all of our soldiers what legal steps can be taken upon one of these incidents being reported.

    With regard to programs that are on our installations in the Army, as well as what is in the field environment, we do have individuals that are there to receive reports from any victims.

 Page 51       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    And it ranks all the way from through the chain of command through our chaplains through our Equal Opportunity (EO) representatives and others.

    And once those reports are made, then it goes in the legal channels, as I said, because it is a criminal offense.

    For the victims, for victim advocacy, we have folks both from the medical side of the house as well as victims' liaison officers that are tied in with our surgeon general to provide those services available to the females.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So they find a woman in the service who gets raped by a fellow service member, you have there in the immediate theater an evacuation to support hospital, emergency care, rape kit examination available, rape trauma counseling, police there to take my statements.

    What do you have on the ground out there, in your opinion, as a commanding officer?

    General HAGENBECK. Well, I think that we have most of those things but not all.

    We have an ongoing task force looking right now with the first briefing coming back to me tomorrow overseeing a part of this task force on sexual assault.

    This is a part of the DOD effort to find out where are the seams, if you will, in our program, and what is on the ground that we did or did not deploy into theater.
 Page 52       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So what did you think about what you had and didn't have in Afghanistan? I mean, again, you are somebody who has been out there. You have been in charge.

    What do you think you really have on the ground?

    You just told me, ''We have some of that; we don't have some of that.'' Do you know?

    General HAGENBECK. I know what we had when I was there.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. What did you have?

    General HAGENBECK. We had all of those less some of the counselors in the medical facilities at the hospitals on the ground in Bagram.

    If you recall now, when I was there, it was an extraordinarily austere environment and remains one, as you know. So we had medical evacuation procedures which could take victims back.

    But I am talking hypothetically here, as I said, because we did not execute any of those medical evacuation procedures from that time frame.

    But where we did take soldiers that were wounded or that we would have taken victims as well for additional assets that would be available from a counselor or medical treatment would be back into the European theater.
 Page 53       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Ms. SANCHEZ. In the European theater?

    General HAGENBECK. Yes.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. So you don't have them in the Afghani theater for——

    General HAGENBECK. We did not during my tenure, no.

    Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, gentlemen.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank the gentlelady.

    And I thank, General Hagenbeck, for responding in areas somewhat afield, but I know the gentlelady is very impassioned about this, and I think all of us are on this subcommittee with our involvement in some of the sexual abuse cases, particularly with the Air Force Academy, but it is not systemic, endemic only to the Air Force, it is our concern as well.

    So thank you, General Hagenbeck, for your responsiveness there.

    General HAGENBECK. Sure.

 Page 54       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Mr. MCHUGH. Next we have the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Schrock.

    Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    And thank you all for being here today.

    It is good to see General Hagenbeck again. The last time was K2 or Bagram?

    General HAGENBECK. Bagram.

    Mr. SCHROCK. It was Bagram.

    He was doing a great job then and he continues to. Except this time he gets shot at in the Pentagon but doesn't get a purple heart for it.

    So we are glad to have you back home.

    I have been following closely the efforts of all of the services to transform your forces, both active and reserve, to better meet the demands of the global war on terror and, of course, to operationalize the lessons learned over the past three years.

    The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), as you might have read, recently said to his flag community that if they didn't learn to run their portions of the Navy more like a business their flag careers would be pretty short lived.
 Page 55       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I really support this approach, and I believe his sentiment conveys the new way of thinking that reflects how these times have changed.

    And I commend all of you for taking on a very difficult task of simultaneously fighting this war on terror and transforming your forces and, of course, carrying an all-volunteer force.

    And I recognize that, taken together, this is a daunting challenge.

    I believe you are moving in the right direction. I hope the dialogue we are having today helps this committee and this Congress support those goals.

    That being said, I have a question for everyone.

    Have the individual services been assured that money saved through shedding excess capabilities, personnel and structure will be kept within your services to pay for so many needed programs in modernization?

    Is uncertainty with regard to this a disincentive for making sacrifices and enduring painful changes?

    I believe it was Admiral Green mentioned that Navy personnel will shrink over the next few months by 7,900 people. That is an amazing savings and will that stay within the Navy or go someplace else?
 Page 56       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    That is a real concern to me.

    General CARTWRIGHT. I would kick it off from the joint perspective, since we don't have any money.

    But I think that, one, it is absolutely essential, whether you think of it from a business perspective or any other way, to incentivize people to make change and to keep up with the change of the world, as we see it.

    They have to have an incentive to do that.

    If you go out and make painful change, and generally there are going to be people pained by any kind of change, and then you further disincentivize it by taking the fruits of that pain and giving it to someone else, that doesn't generally incentivize you to come back and make the additional change that you need in your community.

    So absolutely critical to any of the change that the department sees under the guise of transformation is the idea that if you go in and look at your force and decide how you want to construct it and what things need to be incentivized and what things you need to start to step away from or moderate, you need to be able to keep the capital that you generate by those changes.

    And that has to be an underpinning. If it is not, you just will not get the change necessary from the institution.
 Page 57       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And from a business perspective, you have to have that incentive.

    And I will turn it over to Navy.

    Mr. SCHROCK. You didn't say yes, but I am assuming that is a yes.

    General CARTWRIGHT. That is a yes. [Laughter.]

    Mr. SCHROCK. Okay.

    Admiral Green.

    Admiral GREEN. Sir, when we look at recapitalization requirements, the incentive is there regardless of what decisions we make with regard to end-strength numbers.

    The fact of the matter is we have to recapitalize my service in order to carry out the operational missions we expect to be assigned to us in the years to come.

    On the personnel side, which I will turn over the Admiral Huly in just a second, the incentive to change in a way that we train, assign, recruit and so forth is based on our imperative to put the right people in the right jobs at the right time and in the right numbers.
 Page 58       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Putting all of that together, certainly the financial incentives are apparent. But as the operator for the Navy, my focus is really on the operational side and our continuing ability to carry out our missions.

    That is central to what we are doing.

    Mr. SCHROCK. I think a lot of folks who are questioning why the Navy was decommissioning the Spruance class so early. And clearly, I understood it because the money saved can go into Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), DD(X) and others.

    General HULY. Yes, sir, that is part of the reason. There are other parts as well that have to do with Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding and the requirement to carry out the missions assigned to us.

    We can do that with the units that we have in the inventory right now. And our ability to be able, again, to carry out those future missions is based on our ability to recapitalize appropriately.

    Mr. SCHROCK. Admiral Hoewing?

    Admiral HOEWING. And it has been covered very well, sir, but I just want to add that when we say that we are reducing 7,900 personnel in fiscal year 2005, what has happened is because of the changes that have taken place and the changes that we have planned, the requirement for those people will go away.
 Page 59       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    The ships are either being decommissioned, the requirement is no longer there and we are capitalizing on that. And one of the benefits of that is that those dollars be reinvested to sustain the transformation that we need in the future.

    So the whole idea here is that it is not more work on fewer sailors' backs; that work is being eliminated.

    Mr. SCHROCK. As I understand too, the LCS will take this many crew members where the Spruance had this many crew members.

    And I think that makes about——

    Admiral HOEWING. Less than one-third, yes, sir.

    Mr. SCHROCK. Right.

    General Cody?

    General CODY. Well, I would agree with General Cartwright.

    In fact, the decision to cancel the Comanche program, a $14.6 billion program, when we went forward to brief the joint staff and then the Secretary of Defense, it was clear to us that they understood what a vital change we were taking in terms of our modularity, and why it made sense to cancel Comanche and reinvest in 900 more helicopters and restructure our Army aviation programs.
 Page 60       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And the directive was, ''All of this money that you saved from that has to be redirected.''

    And so we feel very confident that, as we look for efficiencies, and as we look to better ourselves, better our service, that the incentive is there for us to take that money and reprogram it and like we did with the budget on the Comanche.

    Mr. SCHROCK. That certainly makes the incentive a lot more——

    General CODY. Absolutely.

    Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank the gentleman.

    The gentlelady from Guam, Ms. Bordallo?

    Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    And thank you, all the witnesses, for testifying this afternoon.

    My question is directed to General Cody and Hagenbeck and Admiral Green and Hoewing.
 Page 61       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Both of your services are proposing to continue converting military to civilian positions. Such conversion actually requires, in my opinion, significant up-front costs.

    Does the fiscal year 2005 budget include the funding necessary to conduct the proposed conversions?

    Or is this cost expected to be a war-related cost to be included in the supplemental?

    General CARTWRIGHT. I will certainly kick it off even though you didn't ask me and then let them pick up.

    But there is $572 million in the fiscal year budget——

    Ms. BORDALLO. In the budget.

    General CARTWRIGHT [continuing]. For mil-to-civ conversions.

    Now, that does not anticipate that it is a one-for-one conversion.

    I think when the services explain their positions, they will lay out for you that in some cases it is one to one. Other cases, they get very good benefits: three or four military people may be put into military skills and one civilian or technology or a combination of the two could replace a contractor.
 Page 62       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But I will turn that part over to the services.

    General CODY. I guess we will go first.

    One, we have it in the budget for 2004, but not 2005.

    And part of our plan in 2006 to make the decision on whether we stay at that 30,000 increase in force structure which is based upon 15,000 military-to-civilian conversions. And that comes out to about $4.1 billion over that time for the mil-to-civ conversion.

    We have run the numbers for, kind of, rough order of magnitude.

    It is about $75,000 mil pay for military person and roughly about $72,000 for civilian, depending upon what it is. And so we have to go in the supplemental.

    Ms. BORDALLO. You will be in the supplemental?

    General CODY. Yes, madam.

    Buster?

    General HAGENBECK. Nothing to add, madam.

 Page 63       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Ms. BORDALLO. All right.

    Admiral?

    Admiral HOEWING. In the Navy we are proposing somewhere around 1,700 military-to-civilian conversions, most of these conversions are in the medical communities.

    The funding for the civilian personnel is in the fiscal year 2005 budget.

    One of our challenges will be that, as you convert those military billets into the civilian work force, those military people; we have to have a process to reinvest them.

    We have to either be able to move them into other valid positions or we need force-shaping tools that would give us the opportunity to, let's say, take that medical specialists, whatever that specialty is, and they become the civilian.

    If that is the case, then we are fully funded in order to be able to execute that.

    Ms. BORDALLO. All right.

    I have one other question. The Army is using the Marines' emergency authority to exceed all end-strength limits. And this authority must be extended yearly by the president based on the security of our country.

 Page 64       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    What would happen to the Army's transformation plans and current mission requirements if this authority is not extended to you?

    And I guess that would be Generals Cody and Hagenbeck.

    General CODY. Thank you, madam.

    When we brought forward the plan to the secretary of defense and then to the president, we said, ''We don't want to reset our Army back to the Cold War mass that we have like we are bringing back these four and one-third divisions right now.''

    We ought to reset them to where we want to be.

    At the same time, we want to bring them to a modular design, but we also have the global war on terrorism that has a large portion of our force engaged. We can't do it all at the same time without that bump up.

    And that is what we came and made the case for saying, ''We could do it if we weren't fighting this global war on terrorism.''

    ''We could do it if we weren't having to reset ourselves. But to do it all at the same time, we need the bump up.''

    That will be a hard decision for the Army and for the Department of Defense if the emergency is shortened in 2005. I don't see that, but if it happens in 2005, or 2006, we will have to take a hard look.
 Page 65       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We realize that, as we look at how many brigades we need for the national military strategy, based upon what we know today, we need to have 10 more brigades.

    So we are going to grow from 33 to 10 to 43 by 2006 to meet what we think is the right rotation base for the right type of all volunteer Army for the Operating Tempo (OPTEMPO) that we see out there.

    So we would have to really relook at our plans if the emergency powers ended in 2005.

    Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank the gentlelady.

    If Dr. Gingrey will bear with me for a moment, because I just want to make sure I understood what General Cody said with respect to that mil-civ operation.

    You have a three-year program, $4.-something billion, roughly, 2005, 2006, 2007. There is no money in the budget for 2005.

    But did I hear you say there is going to be, or likely to be, a supplemental request. I am not sure.
 Page 66       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General CODY. Let me see if I understand your question, Mr. Chairman.

    One is we are funding the 30,000 and the building of the 10 brigades through the emergency funding. And we are banking on a 2005 supplemental.

    If we don't get the 2005 supplemental, it will impact on our ability to build the brigades. But it will also cause us a readiness problem in third and fourth quarter of 2005 for resetting these forces that are coming back up for this rotation that we have right now.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Well, I understand that.

    You would have more problems than that if you don't get a supplemental based on the DOD approach. But on that military to civilian conversion program——

    General CODY. Okay, I see, mil-civ.

    Mr. MCHUGH. There is no money for the 2005 piece that we can find to do that.

    General CODY. No, there is not.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I thought I heard you say that there may be money in the supplemental to fund the first phase of what will be a four point, some billion dollar, three-year program.
 Page 67       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General CODY. It will be out of our budget. We have $190 million right now in the fiscal year 2004 budget for mil to civ.

    But we are looking at 15,000 over the next 4 years in order to get the efficiency so we can bring down that temporary 30,000.

    And so we have money in 2004. We have 190,000 in 2005.

    And we will use money from our programs to pay for it. And then we will use the supplemental dollars to take care of the 30,000 and the buildup of our 10 brigades.

    I want to make sure——

    Mr. MCHUGH. So that is roughly $4 billion out of hide, as it is currently envisioned, roughly.

    General CODY. Yes, sir. Potentially, yes sir.

    General CARTWRIGHT. But I want to make sure that there is $572 million in 2005 for about 10,070 mil-to-civ conversions spread across all four services.

    Mr. MCHUGH. New money?

    General CARTWRIGHT. In the budget. In the budget for 2005; in the submission.
 Page 68       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. MCHUGH. But it is not new money.

    General CARTWRIGHT. That is not new money.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. I am not picking a fight, General.

    General CARTWRIGHT. No, I just want to make sure——

    Mr. MCHUGH. I am just trying to get the facts.

    General CARTWRIGHT [continuing]. Because we are talking past each other a little bit here on this.

    Mr. MCHUGH. The point being two interesting things. And we all get in trouble when we assume.

    I think there have been some basic assumptions. And it was not, in my case, predicated upon any misleading statements by Office of the Secretary, or the services, or anybody else, that the military civilian would, by and large, be a one-for-one.

    And General, you just said that is not true. So, you are being aboveboard about it, number one.

    Number two, I think there is an assumption that whatever that cost, this doesn't come cheap. I did lay out one-for-one, but whatever it is: $4.1 billion, whatever the matrix may be as to how you determine how many you bring back in after you convert them is that it would be an additional amount of money and nobody ever said that either.
 Page 69       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, I mean we are learning this as we go along. And that is not an insignificant amount of money to ask the services to self-finance.

    Does the Navy have a bill?

    Admiral HOEWING. As I said a minute ago, our military to civilian conversions are essentially all in the medical community and that community runs out of the Defense Health Program.

    So, the funding arrangement right now is the dollars in the budget are there to cover the civilian personnel costs within fiscal year 2005, for those military to civilian conversions the dollars are not there for those military people.

    So, as the military people, as those billets stand up on civilians, we either have to find new jobs, but these people will then be above our end strength that we have been briefing right here.

    What we are planning on is for that end strength of those 1,700 to go down.

    And that is my point here. If we have valid positions out there for those medical people, that is going to be our first thing to do.

    But we may need some transition-type incentives over the years to come that will give us the capability of keeping faith with those people when those jobs go away.
 Page 70       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. MCHUGH. I think all of the services are going to need to be creative about that. That was another question.

    But I thank the Georgian for being patient with me. I just wanted to make sure that I understood that.

    And with that, I am pleased he is here and honored to yield to him.

    Dr. Gingrey?

    Dr. GINGREY. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, thank you.

    I am going to shift over to Admirals Green and Hoewing for my first question.

    And Admirals, for as much as the Army has utilized its reserve component forces in the past few years, it seems that the Navy has stayed away from using them, but particularly the reserve aviation assets.

    And as the Navy begins to enact the Fleet Response Plan it is unclear to me how the Navy intends to fund the manpower needs necessary to sustain readiness levels that you are talking about, as well as the ability to surge on a moment's notice, as you said.

    And so here is my question: it seems that when your reserve aviation assets cost maybe only a fifth as much as active duty assets, they provide a good financial option for the Navy, yet I am not sure of the clearness of the Navy's plan for the future of reserve aviation and I was hoping that either one or both of you could comment on that.
 Page 71       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Admiral GREEN. Yes, sir. Let me begin from the operational perspective and just say that on any given day, we have quite a number of reserve aviators deployed forward; several aircraft in the Southern Command conducting counternarcotics and other operations.

    During the period of time when I commanded our naval forces in the Southern Command, that Air Wing 20 came around on board USS Nimitz and was able to carry out a big part of our operation down there.

    And we have reserve aviators, both aircrews and maintainers, deployed forward around the world conducting operations.

    With regard to the restructuring and the realignment of reserve aviation, along with the rest of the reserve force, as we go closer and closer to the ideal of the total force within the Navy, what we are seeing is an almost transparent relationship.

    In fact, a unit identity within the service, with regard to who is doing the flying and who is making the aircraft available to operate.

    The establishment of the Fleet Response Units (FRU)s is a good example of how we are going about doing that.

    As we find ourselves somewhat constrained, in terms of maritime patrol and recon aircraft globally, the part that the reserves are playing is absolutely crucial to our ability to carry out our global missions.
 Page 72       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, I would say that from our perspective, from an operator's perspective, we in fact, are moving more and more forward to the best application of the most ready forces and to support, not just the Fleet Response Plan, but the global missions that are assigned to the service and the reservists are absolutely at the center of that approach.

    Admiral HOEWING. Very little to add other than as an aviator, one of the things that we face in the naval aviation in the reserves is that some of the equipment, some of those aircraft are not up to the same standard as many of our forward deploying aircraft that we have on our carriers.

    With the stand up of our Fleet Response Units, this gets those very talented aviators in the reserves mixing right in with their active duty counterparts, which gives us greater capability.

    So, my point would be that we have more and more reserve aviator integration into our active force, which makes us even more capable, because we can reach back and grab that experience and technical capability that our reserve aviators bring.

    Dr. GINGREY. Let me get a little bit more specific and maybe somewhat parochial in regard to the FA–18 Reserve fighter squadrons.

    I have a very deep concern about some of the discussion about the possibility of decommissioning squadrons, the reserve component squadrons. And particularly as it might apply to my own district, could you speak to that?
 Page 73       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Admiral GREEN. Well, sir, first I would say that, as Admiral Hoewing has, that the currency of the aircraft, the readiness of the aircraft and the fit of the aircraft is the central issue here.

    What I would prefer to do is provide a written response to your question to go specifically to the issue that you are addressing, so that we can make sure that we get the numbers and the plan exactly right and to satisfy your question.

    Dr. GINGREY. Great.

    Thank you, Admiral and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman.

    Admiral you spoke about the Navy active end strength and the decommissions, et cetera, and how that is brought to you to your current end strength estimate.

    When the CNO briefed the full committee on his plan in 2004, just about a year ago, and this is the CNO's chart, and we will put that in front of you, just so you have a copy of it.

    The top line was at 2004 submission, where he expected the end strength level to be through fiscal year 2009 at 370,100.

 Page 74       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    When he came in for 2005, with the same brief a year later, and again submitted this chart, he drew it down to 357,000, this gray area being the difference in one year.

    If you just look at this chart, but based on the CNO's chart, that is a relatively significant difference. I am just curious what happened from 2004 submission to 2005 that justified that kind of big change.

    Admiral HOEWING. Thank you for the question, sir.

    The CNO and his leadership team, me included as the manpower and personnel person, have a continuing developing human resources strategy for the Navy for the future.

    That strategy has been developing over the last two years. It will be continuing to develop over time and as you take a look at the Navy's strategic manning approach, the how's of which I mentioned a little while ago, the looking at the true requirements, elimination of duplication; our history has been that we invest in technology, but not reduce the people that that technology was designed to replace in the first place.

    Our strategy now has changed because we are in a position to be able to do that.

    With very high reenlistment rates, very good recruiting capabilities, and very low attrition, we are in a position now where we are strong enough to be able to very specifically go out and determine what those requirements are and take those efficiencies where they make sense so that we can do exactly what we have all been talking about.
 Page 75       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And that is to be able to reinvest those dollars, not on the backs of sailors, but because the work has gone away.

    So, we are tabbing a very comprehensive approach at taking a look at the work that sailors are doing. Let me give you one really good example of a way that we are capitalizing on our investments.

    We have a process we call, a revolution in training. And in that revolution in training we are delivering training and education to our enlisted sailors now and officers in the future, that increases the output of the training to where as the sailors know more; their level of knowledge goes up.

    But, at the same time, their cycle time, while going through that training, is dramatically reduced.

    As a result of that, we are able to reduce those overhead accounts where we have thousands of sailors in training billets and improve the quality of the training and education and improve the capabilities of the sailors, all at the same time.

    That is just one example of being able to capitalize on that.

    And this is an emerging strategy. If you take a look at the CNO's chart there, we believe that is an executable strategy from the military manpower requirements that we will be seeing for the next several years.
 Page 76       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you.

    Obviously there are a number of questions that rise out of this projection.

    And there are projections and the Army has theirs and the Marine Corps and of course, the Air Force. The first is: are we going to be able to keep in uniform, those men and women we need to recruit and retain?

    And many of us, even though the snapshot today is very positive in that regard, but also, do we and will we, more importantly, when we look at this chart, assuming it is followed through, will we have sufficient force to meet all of the contingencies and missions that we have out there?

    And I was just curious, how do the services, in this case the Army and the Navy, what metrics do they use to determine that we cannot just meet the requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan, but everything else we got going on or likely?

    How do you make the judgment, ''Yes, we are okay.'' or ''No, we are not.''? What are your metrics? Is that a fair question?

    Admiral HOEWING. Let me start out from the Navy's perspective, from our manning perspectives, we know that for those operational units that are surge ready, ready to forward deploy, that includes things like the Seabees and the SEALS and those support forces, the hospital corpsmen that go with the Marines, we know that we have to keep those operational units manned at what we call C–1, full readiness, so that they are ready to deploy.
 Page 77       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    That is where our priority goes and if you took a look at the manpower structure that is underneath this chart, you will see that there is very little reduction, in fact, very little reduction other than those associated with the decommissionings and some optimal manning things where we found out that our ships were operating better with fewer people, because we were eliminating some of those very low, the most junior jobs on those ships that were being done by our least skilled sailors.

    They were eliminating that work and doing that work ashore.

    So, to answer your question, sir, from a recruiting perspective, we believe we should stay strong, in fact, should continue to remain strong, because our numbers are going down in the recruiting market because the requirement is less.

    And from a retention perspective, we have sailors that are going to be in better jobs.

    They are not going to be in some of those menial tasks that they have done in the past. Higher quality jobs, better job content means that, we believe, that those sailors will stay.

    We know that there has to be a strong incentive package to continue to do that and that is why Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) programs are so important for us.

    So, from a mission meeting the mission success perspective, we think we do have the sufficient forces because that is not the area where we are taking those efficiencies.
 Page 78       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Mr. MCHUGH. So you judge it by and large as to who is remaining and what their jobs are and do they cover the specific or likely challenges that are out there?

    Admiral HOEWING. Yes, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. Thank you.

    General HAGENBECK. Sir, we have, obviously, very similar metrics as the Navy. We look at in the aggregate, we look at it by unit, we look at it by grade and skill.

    We also pay attention to the propensity to serve and reenlist, and we look at the OPTEMPO that we have. And by all accounts right now, we are in extraordinarily good shape, but that is not to say that the behaviors may change in the long run, based on what our commitments are.

    We have people from the Army Research Institute and RAND, who are continually conducting surveys for us and providing us analytics against historical trends and what we look like today and try to predict what we will look like tomorrow.

    All of those indicators, at this time, are very positive. But we watch this on a daily basis.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much.
 Page 79       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I was going to ask you if you could stand by for a second while I consult with my colleagues here.

    Doctor Snyder has a quick follow-up.

    Dr. SNYDER. Admiral, this is for my education here.

    I think in your written statement you used the phrase, discussing this general topic, what you talked about with Mr. McHugh, ''revolutionary shipboard watchstanding practices.'' I don't know what that means.

    Admiral HOEWING. There are several things. If you take a look at the way we have manned our, using a surface ship as an example, over time we had grown our watchstanding crew on the bridge to where you would have seven or eight personnel up there.

    We have bought more technology to put on those bridges, like some of the navigation materials and things like that, but we never removed the people off the bridge.

    Same thing in the engineering systems; many of those technologies have been inserted in order to drive down manpower costs, but the people were not removed. And that is what we mean by that.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Gentlemen, the reason I consulted, I didn't want to deprive any of the members if they had a specific question, they felt compelled to ask right now.
 Page 80       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    The good news for you is they didn't, although I can assure we will and we would appreciate your forbearance and follow up with some written questions and if you could respond in writing to us to fill out the record, we would be appreciative.

    Want to thank you again for being here today, for your service, for the great contribution you make to every American citizen at a very, very challenging time for a whole lot of reasons.

    You are doing a great job, we appreciate it. God bless you and thank you for being here.

    We will stand in recess until we return. We have four votes, four or five. My apologies to the second panel; I hope they are able to smoke them if you got them. We will be back soon.

    [Recess.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you for your patience, gentlemen. And I do deeply appreciate it.

    And before we get to your testimony, let me introduce the distinguished members of the second panel.

    The first is Lieutenant General Duncan McNabb, United States Air Force, who is Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Programs, Headquarters, Department of the Air Force.
 Page 81       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And we welcome Lieutenant General Richard ''Tex'' Brown, United States Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Headquarters, Department of the Air Force; Lieutenant General Jan C. Huly, United States Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps; and Lieutenant General Garry L. Parks, United States Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps.

    We welcome you all. We have had the opportunity to work with a number of you.

    To those we have, we welcome you back; to those we haven't, welcome in the first place.

    As I mentioned to the first panel, we do have all of your written testimony in its entirety. Without objection, they will be entered into the record in their entirety. Hearing none, so ordered.

    And with that, we will take your testimony in the order in which I had the opportunity to introduce you.

    Lieutenant General McNabb, welcome sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. DUNCAN J. MCNABB, USAF, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, PLANS AND PROGRAMS, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
 Page 82       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General MCNABB. Thank you, sir.

    Mr. Chairman, Congressman Snyder and members of the committee, the Air Force is a team of active duty, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and civilian personnel, brought together to wield air and space power in defense of our nation.

    As we transform for the future, we are acutely aware that in the end the process of transformation begins and ends with people.

    And I got to talk to Congressman Saxton last week about transformation and what we are trying to do there.

    Two-plus years of a global war on terrorism have taught us that our enemies are unpredictable and adaptive, changing as we change.

    To be adaptive and agile ourselves, we must transform based on broad capabilities, not specific threats, and we must man-up with the right-sized, right-trained, right-equipped future total force.

    We see this in our evolving joint concepts of operation.

    Afghanistan and Iraq have reinforced our conviction that a transformational operational concept strives to close the seams among the services to provide the joint force commander with the most effective options for any situation, regardless of what the individual services contribute and how it is all pulled together.
 Page 83       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    To do this, we need airmen who can cross service lines to live, think and operate as part of a joint team. We only need to look at the success the close air support played in Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF.

    Our airmen on the ground were the eyes on target; the terminal sensors, if you will. The Air Force leadership is committed to increasing the effectiveness of air support to the land forces, which means developing a new generation of battlefield airmen.

    This requires new technology, but it also means a new way of thinking culturally. And these airmen, like all airmen, must think joint and they must think expeditionary.

    We have made great progress in maturing our air expeditionary force concept (AEF), which I outlined in my written testimony.

    And we continue to tailor and shape our AEFs based on lessons learned from the crucible of war: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and ongoing operations.

    After 9/11, the Air Force had to stand up 32 expeditionary bases to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That required an enormous amount of expeditionary combat support: civil engineers, medical forces, and the like, and much of that capability is located in the guard and reserves.

    So our challenge is not that we lack manpower, but that we must partner the active and reserve in new organizations to produce capability more efficiently.
 Page 84       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We must integrate our total force into state-of-the-art systems that are coming onboard, like the FA–22 and C–17, which will allow us to surge and deliver more sorties, more munitions and more tons of cargo per day, provided they have the right mix of personnel and ideal crew ratios.

    Additionally, increased investments in the joint enablers, like unmanned aerial vehicles, C4ISR and space will open up new reach-back roles and missions for guard and reserve forces that we have not had before.

    Reserve war fighters will be able to play vital front-line combat roles without losing the stability demanded by their civilian lives.

    If today the cutting edge of the future total force is the blended 116th Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar (JSTAR) wing, imagine tomorrow an integrated space-based radar mission where our reservists will fly the satellite for a four-hour period before reporting back to his civilian job.

    Or imagine a reservist in a blended Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) wing, based at Nellis Air Force Base, flying an attack mission from 7,500 miles away.

    Well, you don't have to imagine that; that is in fact happening today.

    As we reshape our total force, we cannot overlook the fact that citizen airmen form the backbone of the reserve components, and we are highly sensitive to the impact recurring mobilizations have on our reserve component members and their families, as well as their employers.
 Page 85       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We believe the synergies achieved through the future total force will make the Air Force team more effective than ever, and the time to do so has never been better to make it happen.

    In the end, the future total force is about making the most of our most critical resource, our great airmen.

    With the support of Congress, we are confident that we can put the right people in the right place with the right training to fight and win our nation's wars.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.

    [The prepared statement of General McNabb can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, General.

    Next, General Richard ''Tex'' Brown, deputy chief of staff for personnel.

    General, welcome, we look forward to your comments.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. RICHARD ''TEX' BROWN, USAF, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PERSONNEL, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

 Page 86       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Snyder, Congressman Saxton. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

    Before I begin, I would like to recognize two groups for their outstanding support of our men and women in uniform, and the first group is Congress.

    Over the last several years, you have shown strong, sustained support for our airmen. You approved significant advances in pay and benefits, retention incentives for the men and women of all the military services.

    These initiatives have made a significant difference in the readiness of our Air Force and the quality of life of our members and families.

    Our airmen recognize your support, and it does make a difference. Let me extend to you their thanks.

    The other group I would like to recognize is the families of the men and women of the Air Force.

    The support and sacrifices made by Air Force family members are a critical force-multiplier to the overall success of the Air Force team. Their sacrifices and service are crucial to the overall effectiveness of our team.

    We salute them, and we are very proud of them.

 Page 87       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Now, a few important issues affecting the people of our Air Force today: over the last decade, America's airmen have responded to dramatic changes in the world security environment.

    We completely transformed our Air Force into an agile expeditionary force, capable of rapidly responding on a global scale with forces tailored to handle each contingency.

    Since 9/11, that transformation has taken on an even more urgent and accelerated pace. This transformation produced outstanding initial results, but the journey is just beginning.

    We recognize the Herculean effort put forth by all members of the force to meet these changes in our mission needs, and in particular the stress we placed on members of the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve.

    We are making every effort to relieve the stress on the airmen who make up those mission-essential forces, just as we are making an effort to relieve the stress on many of our active-duty members in critical war-fighting skills.

    Because we currently have more people than authorized billets, it has led some to ask if we need to increase the size of the force to accomplish the mission, especially with mobilizations in effect.

    The answer is that, first, we need to ensure we are using the people we have in the most efficient and effective way.
 Page 88       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    The Air Force must ensure optimum allocation of its existing force assets before requesting an expensive increase to military end-strength.

    As the Air Force adopts the capabilities construct, we are adjusting our manpower requirements processes, starting with requirements to meet war-fighting commanders' needs.

    Now, we will continue to review and adjust our manpower to support requirements, ensure we use military resources for military tasks.

    And we are going to look to civilians and contractors to meet the balance of our human resource needs.

    Since these changes directly impact our people who serve voluntarily, we need to be prudent in the speed and magnitude we use to make changes, in order to avoid unintended adverse consequences.

    Our challenge is to make the right personnel policy decisions, implement them in a way that allows our systems to react quickly enough to meet emerging requirements, while avoiding undue hardships on our people.

    Today, we are also shaping what our total force will look like in the future. As we carefully review what each component brings to the fight, we are working to ensure the best capabilities are retained and nurtured.
 Page 89       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    These efforts are intended to expand mission flexibility and create efficiencies in our total force. We could not accomplish the mission without them, and our seamless integration of active and Air Reserve Component (ARC) forces continues to facilitate their participation.

    In the long term, we must make every effort to relieve the pressure on our ARC forces, just as we must take steps to ensure the long-term health of our active-duty forces.

    So too must we ensure the long-term health, combat capability and career viability of our civilian soldiers in the Air Guard and Reserve.

    Sir, this is the third year that I have been here to testify before you, as my good friend, Garry Parks, to my left.

    And I look forward to your questions. And I am glad to be here with you. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of General Brown can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, General, and we do appreciate your stick-to-itiveness in being with us again this year.

    No stranger to this committee, either, and I think in the past I have done this as well, and mispronounced his last name, General Huly.
 Page 90       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I am consistently, unfortunate as it is, consistently dense at some occasions, General. I apologize for that mistake again.

    I understand you are going to be presenting testimony for both you and General Parks. Is that right?

    General HULY. Actually, sir——

    Mr. MCHUGH. You are?

    General HULY. Yes, sir, I am Lieutenant General Jan Huly, yes, sir.

    Congressman Snyder——

    Mr. MCHUGH. Well, General, that is what I said.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAN HULY, USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR PLANS, POLICIES AND OPERATIONS, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS

    General HULY. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am proud and honored to be here, representing the 215,000 Marines, both active and reserve, in the United States Marines.
 Page 91       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But General Parks and I did collaborate on a single statement. And in as much as he is senior, a little bit older and wiser than me, I defer to him to make the statement.

    So again, I look forward to your questions.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I withdraw my apologies for being confused. Because——

    [Laughter.]

    General Parks, good to see you again sir. We look forward to your comments.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. GARRY L. PARKS, USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR MANPOWER AND RESERVE AFFAIRS, HEADQUARTERS, USMC

    General PARKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Congressman Snyder, Congressman Saxton, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon.

    As has been mentioned, General Huly and I are honored to be here to represent our Marines, both active and reserve, that serve in the Corps today, and to thank you for your support of the dedicated Marines that we have and their patriotic families.
 Page 92       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Your Marine Corps continues its role in securing the interests of our nation, with forward-deployed naval expeditionary forces tailored for the current operating environment.

    At this time, we are flowing what will ultimately be 25,000 deployed Marines and sailors to Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

    Our reserve units and individual augmentees have rapidly integrated with our active force, demonstrating the effectiveness of the Marine Corps' total force team.

    I would like to highlight just a couple points.

    Due to the hard work of our recruiters and our Marine leaders all across the Corps, we are once again poised to exceed our fiscal year recruiting and retention goals. Our Marines are working hard, they are stretched, but they are doing what they trained to do.

    We are watching our recruiting and retention numbers and other leading indicators more closely than ever, and to date they remain strong.

    The Corps has less than 4,100 selected Marine Corps Reserve unit Marines mobilized, and 1,250 individual volunteers who are filling important joint and internal billets.

    Finally, we are proud of the deployment support programs that we have in support of the families that are back as well as the Marines that we have forward.
 Page 93       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    You can be proud of the contributions and sacrifices of the young men and women of your Marine Corps, both active and reserve, and the families that support them.

    We thank the committee for your continuing commitment to take care of your Marines.

    We both look forward to answering your questions.

    [The prepared statement of General Parks can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, General Parks.

    Let me start with you, and to the extent it is applicable, on your colleagues from the Air Force. You mentioned the 25,000 deployment. That is a departure from your traditional role.

    We will ask, probably in written form, to the Army why that becomes necessary. I think it relates directly to the Army's current situation with respect to deployability and available end-strength.

    But it does affect some of the other normal rotations in the Marines.

    I assume your Okinawa deployment and the draw-down of a single battalion there has something to do with that.
 Page 94       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    This 25,000 seems to have an inevitable impact on your ability to meet other deployment and wartime requirements. And maybe it doesn't.

    But could you comment on that situation?

    I remember General Hagee had said earlier in testimony to the Senate, you can do what you are doing right now, as long as these new requirements are short lived.

    It doesn't look like they are going to be very short lived. So, I am curious how you would assess that and what you feel your needs may be over a longer term.

    General HULY. Thank you Mr. Chairman. The Marine Corps is expeditionary by nature and we are accustomed to deploying in support of contingencies worldwide.

    And we are structured in a way, I think the term modular was mentioned, we call it the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, that we size and shape to the mission that we have before us.

    And I believe your comparative statement is true in regard to as long as our contingencies are limited in duration.

    What we are doing right now is we are looking internally, as I know my colleagues are, as we have talked about already on how we mitigate the near-term impact, because there is obviously the question in regard to the reliance on reserves.
 Page 95       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I will tell you that of the 25,000 Marines that we have going to Iraqi Freedom I, the first half, excuse me, Iraqi Freedom II, but the first half of that for our deployment, 12 percent of those are Marine Corps reservists.

    We are looking at other ways to assist us internally, short of a permanent end strength increase.

    ''Trust your extensions,'' that is a Marine who says, ''I want to stay in, I want to at least go on this deployment, but I may not want to re-enlist.'' We have opened a valve on that.

    These are authorities that Congress has provided.

    We are looking at some increased accessions, to help us in some specific areas.

    We have considered the increase of our first term and our subsequent term alignment plans, which are our reenlistment valves, and yet we elected not to do that because we think the timing is not right for that.

    Some Marines who have been mobilized for more than two years have volunteered to remain on, again, in a volunteer status.

    We are open to looking at some retiree recalls: again, those who have been out just in the last couple years, who fit into category I, who are ready to go.
 Page 96       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    To turn the valve open a bit more on that, we did some of that for Iraqi Freedom I. Looking at that again, these kind of measures are simply some examples of how we can mitigate the impact for the near-term, while we look at the total revamping longer term on how we are shaped, based on the lessons learned that we have in the global war on terrorism at large, as well as lessons learned from OIF I.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you. This probably won't be an entirely fair question, but welcome to Congress, I guess.

    General Hagee's comment was that the Marine Corps would be able to, ''Meet operational contingencies as long as the contingencies are temporary in nature.''

    Now, I recognize that was his statement, I don't expect you to define his words, but what in your judgment, where do we cross the line and admit we are going to be doing this long enough.

    The very creative measures that the Marine Corps has made, and you just mentioned them, and all the other services have done them as well, can't be a management system over the longer term in my opinion.

    So, where do we draw the line and say, ''Okay, we got to stop kidding ourselves, it is no longer temporary'' if we should get to that?

    General HULY. Sir, I would like to go ahead as the deputy commandant for operations, committed to the global war on terrorism, as we stated earlier, 25,000 Marines are currently deploying or are in Kuwait on their way into Iraq.
 Page 97       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We have a few thousand more in Okinawa, we have 2,000 in Afghanistan and as you alluded to we have almost 1,500 currently in Haiti; and we have some Marine expeditionary units forward deployed.

    As I looked at the charts this morning, we have about 50,000 United States Marines forward deployed or based and stationed overseas. That is both active and reserve.

    We have an active component of 175,000 Marines, an additional 5,000 reservists on active duty. So, 50,000 forward deployed, we have a base of about 180,000 that are currently sustaining that.

    We think that is pretty manageable for right now, sir, as a matter of fact. It is putting some stress on the force, but we are able to meet to our contingencies, we are able to meet our commitments.

    We think as long as we can keep that ratio with what we have on the horizon, we will be able to meet those commitments.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Let me ask you a quick question.

    Do you maintain the rule of thumb that, for example applies for the Army, for every troop deployed you are actually talking three, because you got one training to go in and the ones that just came out for redeployment?

 Page 98       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General HULY. Sir, our operational tempo, we have an overall goal or objective we like: one unit deployed for three units of measurement of time back in the states. Even before 9/11 we weren't there.

    We were down to about 1 to 2.7. Now we are about down to one to one for some of our operational units.

    Mr. MCHUGH. That is tough.

    General HULY. It does appear to be tough, sir, but if you are a young man or woman joining the Marines on your first enlistment, you are probably making three six- to seven-month deployments in that four-year enlistment.

    And it does seem like it is tough, but people join the Marines to deploy and they are getting the opportunity to do it.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I will be the first to concede the Marines are special. I have no qualms about that. But I worry that for even the toughest Marine, and they are all tough, there comes a time when you have to be home.

    And I worry as well.

    I talked about the Okinawa deployment, well technically, that is a training mission, it is still in support of what may or may not happen on the Korean peninsula.

 Page 99       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Is it not?

    General HULY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. And that is not exactly a Disney film right now.

    Make no mistake about it, you folks are doing a great job, this is in no way a criticism of you, but we are worried about that.

    I want to give the Air Force an opportunity to respond as to their metrics and how they do that, but in fairness to my colleagues, if I may, I will come back to that.

    And I will defer to the ranking member, Doctor Snyder.

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    General Brown, you made a comment in your written statement about this issue of retention and stop-loss, and I think I am just really trying to understand how we calculate things.

    But you say why we are still grappling with skewed retention numbers affected by stop-loss of 2002; we are nevertheless seeing very positive signs overall.

    What does that mean?

 Page 100       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General BROWN. Well, and as I heard the committee ask the panel before us about stop-loss and are your retention numbers a reflective.

    We instituted a stop-loss shortly after 9/11 and we held it for about, across the entire force, was for about three, four or five months and then we gradually started taking different career fields off to where our entire stop-loss was lifted after about a year's time period.

    Throughout the period we were in stop-loss, trying to measure retention, it was inaccurate. When a person can't leave, to measure your retention and start feeling good that you have good retention, is fooling yourself.

    So, clearly during the time of most of fiscal year 2002, where we had stop-loss in effect, for me to tell you our retention was sky high and let's all pat ourselves on the back——

    Dr. SNYDER. Well, that is what I was trying to get at in that line of questioning.

    General BROWN. Yes, I know it was.

    Dr. SNYDER. Because we are trying to say that we think we are in good shape, but we may be fooling ourselves if the stop-loss goes away and everybody goes home and opens a hardware store.

 Page 101       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General BROWN. So, I would say from the Air Force perspective in 2002, we could not measure. That is because we wouldn't let them leave because it was stop-loss.

    So, the 2002 figure is not a figure I can hang my hat on.

    When I look at 2003, and as we are now about six months into fiscal year 2004, I can give you pretty accurate retention figures.

    And our retention: we are feeling pretty good. It is very high, in spite of having gone through almost a year of stop-loss in 2002 and we were concerned, not only in the active force, but the guard and the reserve, that the reaction might be just the opposite.

    ''Well, I am not going to stay with this kind of outfit.'' But we did not get that kind of reaction. Now that is a statement of the faith of our people, of our nation who showed support for those in uniform——

    Dr. SNYDER. I think also you are trying to deal with some of the people who you had the stop-loss order put on them, but then they had some real personal situations, they had already sold their home and invested in a business and I mean you all tried to deal with those things.

    General BROWN. Absolutely.

    Dr. SNYDER. And so, there is not a lot of bad morale.
 Page 102       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General BROWN. Yes, sir. You are exactly right.

    We had a waiver process, when it was really going to be difficult on somebody, then we waivered them from this and let them go.

    So, I think we did it in the right way.

    But my statement was trying to say that it is hard for me to tell you how good our retention figures were or how accurate they are from 2002, but 2003 and now this year of 2004, we are feeling pretty solid about retention.

    Dr. SNYDER. Well, you got exactly what my question was.

    General BROWN. Yes, sir.

    Dr. SNYDER. We need to get that full information when we see those numbers.

    And I am not sure to direct this to General McNabb, or to you, General Brown, but it is my understanding for the last couple of years you all have used the Army National Guard for security.

    And what is the status of that and what are the numbers and how does that fit in to these short-running and long-running issues we are dealing with?
 Page 103       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General BROWN. Okay.

    Do you want me to take it?

    When we found ourselves deployed across the world in a greater way than we had expected, opened up bases for both Afghanistan and then here in this past year with OIF.

    In order to secure those forward bases we took a lot of our Air Force security folks and moved them forward.

    And so, it is a great story for the jointness of all of our forces, as we together looked around and saw how can we help each other.

    And the Army National Guard raised their hands and said, ''We can help you out.''

    So I thank my programmer with the funding, we paid for some Army guardsmen to be activated to help us guard and protect our bases back here at home while our active duty Air Force

    Dr. SNYDER. Do you know what those current numbers are?

    General BROWN. I want to say 6,000.

 Page 104       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    Dr. SNYDER. It is still 6,000 that are activated?

    General MCNABB. I know that we are returning them back. And the story goes on as we look at what our folks are facing in Iraq.

    We are doing the same thing to help the Army and the Marines, as we have expeditionary bases over there where they say, ''Hey, we have some shortfalls'' and then we jump in there and I would echo what General Brown said, this is a real success story because we are sharing and we are doing this in a joint way.

    And where we can help each other, we do. And I think again, it is a real success story.

    General BROWN. Sir, I believe the number was 6,000, what we——

    General MCNABB. Well it was 8,000 to start with.

    Dr. SNYDER. Eight thousand. And we are at least at either half or less than half of that that have now come back off of duty, and we are slowly taking the remainder off duty in the next six months.

    General MCNABB. One of the things that we are doing, Mr. Congressman, is we also added money, we added dollars for technology as we looked at how could you perhaps, take care of this requirement in other ways, rather than just throwing manpower at it.
 Page 105       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And we put in the neighborhood of $400 million into technology to help, as we brought that back to figure out how we could do this in different ways to make sure that we took care of the requirement, but looked at all different ways of doing that.

    Dr. SNYDER. General Brown mentioned jointness. I wanted to ask you and I don't know who to address it: General Park or General Huly.

    As you are looking ahead we talk a lot about jointness and we all know how important it is.

    How does your planning, your training and all on increased jointness at times go by, how are you handling that as you are looking ahead with these manpower needs?

    One of your statements talks about the stress that you are under. Good jointness requires really good training and that is something we have been grappling with for the last several years. How do you respond to that?

    General HULY. Thank you for the question, sir. That is a good one.

    A good example is in our current deployment going to Iraq. We are deploying a Marine Air-Ground Task Force.

    It will have 120 aircraft with this very intensive infantry-intensive organization. All of the aircraft that we are deploying are either helicopters or they are C–130's.
 Page 106       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    All of the close-air support requirements, all of the strap lift to get us there naturally is being provided by the Air Force and the close-air support and any other aviation needs that we need above and beyond are provided by the United States Air Force.

    That is the end result. The result to get there is a lot of good, hard training and planning to get us there.

    Dr. SNYDER. It also takes time though, and if you are under stress, using your words in your written statement, I assume that means finding time and personnel to do everything.

    If, I assume, that one of the things that gets shorted is joint training. Or is that an inaccurate statement?

    General HULY. That is not an accurate statement, so I would classify it as inaccurate.

    Yes, time is of the essence and it really is a hard commodity, but we are not sacrificing joint training to get there.

    Just as a matter of fact, we conducted a rather large, joint, close-air support training exercise out at Twenty-Nine Palms in the National Training Center, in conjunction with the Air Force, the Army, the Navy and the Marines, all in a big one under the auspices of the Joint Forces Command.
 Page 107       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And these techs, I think, that was what January, February timeframe?

    So, we do have a good joint training program going on to capitalize on each other's strengths.

    General PARKS. I would add to that, Mr. Congressman, from the standpoint of our training, we have a heavy portion of our officers and enlisted Marines and professional military education. We take schooling very seriously.

    We have 1,040 officers and enlisted predominantly more senior officers who are right now involved in individual augments on all the myriad joint staffs, not the joint staff, but the joint staffs that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

    At the general officer, flag officer level we have held war-fighters with our sister services; just recently held one at Colorado Springs with the United States Air Force, and just about two weeks ago with the Special Operations Command.

    So, I think, if anything, we are doing more today than we have ever done in the past. And that is not an area that is suffering.

    Dr. SNYDER. Good. Thank you.

    General PARKS. We also, I would tell you, have more general officers on joint assignments than we have ever had.
 Page 108       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Dr. SNYDER. Just to comment, for the Air Force, obviously the Congress and the American people are very concerned about these reports in the paper of the sexual assaults overseas.

    I am not going to ask any questions today, but I think that it is very early in this and I assume you all are very concerned about that and at some point we will have a formal way of looking at that here, but I am not going to ask any questions about that.

    General BROWN. Yes, sir.

    Dr. SNYDER. Not any more than what has already been asked.

    Thank you.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman.

    Gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Saxton?

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The concept of jointness has certainly been well discussed today. I must say that the notion of doing things in a joint way makes a whole lot of sense.

    In fact, this morning in full committee, we had a closed hearing where part of the hearing described a joint activity that took place which was very successful and involved all the services.
 Page 109       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And that happened to be a SOCOM-run activity, mission, but with some conventional forces.

    And I am just wondering, as we sat here this morning or earlier this afternoon, I guess, we heard the Army talk about a unit of employment that would have some joint features.

    A unit of employment, of course, in the Army would take the place of, I guess, a division. And along with being a different name, it would be different in nature because it would be somehow more joint.

    I am wondering if General McNabb and General Huly could give us some input as to what you have heard about the unit of employment. What role Air Force personnel would play in the unit and what role Marine Corps personnel would play in the unit?

    General HULY. No, sir, I think that what we think about it is if I took the race to Baghdad, and you think about what the Marines and the Army and the Special Operations forces were betting on from the Air Force, it wasn't only our indirect fire support, it was ISR, it was so that they could see what was going on around them, it was logistics capabilities so that they could be free of the normal lines of communication and it was a space network which would allow them to communicate and navigate in ways that really changed the way they could do business.

    When you talk about the independent brigades, they are going to be betting on us and I think the Marines and the Navy in ways that are going to be built on trust that we get through exercises by working together and having the successes like we did in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
 Page 110       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And there is no question that all of us have plenty to do, so what we want to do is bet on each other in ways, perhaps, we just didn't realize we could before and we could do that again through exercises and training.

    As the Army transforms, and it is one of those things that when I testify to your committee.

    I have testified to your committee, I talked a little bit about one of the biggest issues we have is that everybody's kind transforming together. As we look to the future we have great opportunities.

    But since everybody is transforming at the same time, what you want to do is make sure we are talking to each other in ways, again, that we have not done before.

    As the Army continues to mature their concept, there is no question they are going to be betting on our joint enablers, especially the stuff again, that we bring to that joint enabling fight which is the mobility or a feeling C4ISR and space in ways that at this point, perhaps they hadn't.

    And so now, we want to make sure that we are agile enough in our transformation to be supporting of them and again, the same things with the Marines and the Navy.

    Mr. SAXTON. Okay. But that is not really my question. That doesn't really answer my question.
 Page 111       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    My question is, if there is a joint force commander, who is the commander of the unit of employment, what role the Air Force plays in the Army unit of employment?

    General MCNABB. Sir, I think that will be on a case-by-case basis. Because I am not exactly sure, the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) will change, and as they joint war-fighting commanders matures, how he is going to fight the fight.

    He will be looking and we are giving them a portfolio of capabilities that he chooses from to support however he is going to go about this.

    And I don't know how to answer it, better than to just say that that joint war-fighting commander will set the pace and say, ''Here is what I have to do.''

    What we want to do is offer to him, ''Hey, we can take of it this way, this way, or this way, but also have the integration of our staff so that they can see the same operational picture.''

    If I think of General Moseley working with his counterparts during Iraqi Freedom, they had to make sure they were talking on a daily basis and sharing what they were trying to get done and say, ''Well, I can help you there, but I can't—but we may have to bet on somebody else to do that.''

    Or can you change your CONOPS here, because I can take care of this from kill box standpoint and others. So, I think that is very fluid.
 Page 112       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And what we want to do is have an agile enough organization in support so that we can take care of the joint war-fighting commander because he doesn't know hours, what he is going to be facing.

    And we have to be quick enough on our feet to be able to take care of that.

    Mr. SAXTON. The joint war-fighting commander will always be an Army general?

    General MCNABB. No, sir.

    Mr. SAXTON. Are you certain?

    General MCNABB. No, sir. I think, in fact I don't. I think it is whoever it is. And all of us need to be able to bring to him, ''Hey, here is our portfolio'' of advantages we offer and then work it from there.

    Mr. SAXTON. General Huly, do you want to take a crack at the same?

    General HULY. Yes, sir. Your last question about the joint war-fighting commander to be in the army, officer: currently the Joint Task Force (JTF) commander that is now standing up at Haiti is Brigadier General Ron Coleman, United States Marines, Second Force Service Support group.
 Page 113       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We are awfully proud of that. We have headed up JTFs before, so there is a good example, right there, of how this dynamic situation continues to grow.

    If I look at the example of how we are doing things in Afghanistan right now, currently the Marine Corps comes under the auspices of CJTF–180. One-eighty comes from when the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps I believe, was the original commander of the first JTF and that is how they got the number for that.

    The Marine Corps' contribution to that currently is the 6th Marine Regimental Headquarters, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines. I have a light attack helicopter squadron over there and a fast company over there.

    None of these Marine Corps units is working together with another Marine Corps, currently.

    They are working with Army units and I believe that is why the Army has probably struck upon the idea of this modularity.

    It is much easier to take these smaller units that can operate somewhat independently, and I think there was a little confusion there earlier today when a brigade will be able to operate by itself, but my understanding from the Army, as General Cody said, we are not going to operate as just the United States Army brigade.

    There will be Marines, there will be Air Force.
 Page 114       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, the way we are doing it in Afghanistan currently is the old way, but we have to do it that way out of necessity.

    In the future, we will be able to plan, or organize, train and equip better with the Army's modular units. Almost the way in which we are getting ready to do it in Afghanistan, in the Western sector that the Marines are moving in there now.

    The Marines also, as one of their major combat elements, will have the first Brigade of the 1st Armored Division working with them for some months.

    So, we are getting modular and we are getting to the concept of a unit of employment there, already before we have actually trained up and operate that way.

    Mr. SAXTON. Okay. You are both telling me then that the unit of employment is not just a division command structure; it is a way of doing business.

    General HULY. That is as I see it from the Marine Corps' perspective yesterday.

    General BROWN. Congressman, if I could add a comment.

    Garry hit on it earlier when he talked about the Marines have been a deployment force since they have been in existence for 45 years; the Air Force was a garrison force and we fought from home plate.
 Page 115       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I was stationed in Europe for almost 10 years and I sat alert at my home station, and I know the enemies are about five minutes away.

    We transitioned out of that, after the Cold War came to an end and throughout the 1990's as we brought the Air Force back home, but then we found ourselves more and more deploying out into activities.

    We started a transformation then to become an air expeditionary force. And so, the unit of deployment, I would call our AEF.

    Now, in a very macro way, that is a big unit of AEF.

    But we break that down in and send portions of AEF as needed, by a joint force commander into the areas around the world where it is needed.

    And some of that deploys in and then comes back home. Some of that is 24 and 7: some of the space assets and the tanker bridge doesn't move but it is always there.

    So, our unit of deployment has transitioned for our Air Force and it is really the AEF construct today that we use and that is how we measure how fast and furious we go.

    General MCNABB. Congressman Saxton, if I could add.

    As you mentioned the Special Operations Forces, and as mentioned by the Marines, every service required a little bit different in how they employed and the Special Operations Forces were used to be very, basically very small groups that had to be supported by the same Air Force that they are talking about with the Army and the Marines were different as well.
 Page 116       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And so what we ought to do is, whoever wanted it, however they were going to deploy, we had to make sure that we folded in with the capabilities that they need.

    And from small to larger, and I think these brigade stops are again, think of them being a little bit more independent. Closer to the way the Marines and the Special Operation Forces have done it in the past.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman.

    I think he raises a good point.

    I have a much better handle on how the Army intends to create these new, formerly brigade, now unit of action, unit of employment, and make him independent, pre-chop stuff out of the division level and vet it in them. Then I do understand exactly how that fits in the jointness.

    And that is something we are going to be very interested in, because I think the logical conclusion, and I think I detected a hint of that in the gentleman's question is that somehow, this is always going to be an Army-commanded thing. And that is hardly joint.

    It is an issue as to how those fit in. And we are going to be very interested to follow that.
 Page 117       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    General Brown, in your statement you make the comment about shaping the force, however, perhaps, most importantly as we shape the force, we want to be sure that we avoid involuntary draconian measures that break faith with our people.

    You wanted to find out what those Draconian measures might be?

    General BROWN. Yes, sir. Thank you for that question because that is important that we truly understand what that means.

    Draconian measures are things that we did back in the early 1990's, we did it in the mid–70's when we came out of Vietnam, where we did reduction in force, the term is RIF.

    Another was this SERB, the Selective Early Retirement Boards, where we told people they would retire or we reduced the force by throwing them out before their time and their desire.

    We want to avoid SERBs and RIF. What we, in shaping our force, today we are over-strength.

    The authorized strength of our airports versus how many actual faces we have onboard? The number of people versus strength, we are a little bit over.

    Now, my planner here beside me, my programmer, these only budgeted for $360,000, so when I have too many faces on board, he looks at me and says, ''How can we afford that?'' And we turn and ask for supplemental.
 Page 118       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Well, in the time of war, we have appreciated that you have come through and helped us with that. But, to be good stewards, we must try to get ourselves back to the authorized strength.

    I don't want to have SERBs or RIFs to do that, so we are looking at some cross training opportunities. We are trying to look at the career fields and find there are some overages, and we still have, even with an over-strength situation.

    We have career fields that were critically manned that were short.

    Okay. So I want to take airman and cross train them from an overage career field into a shortage career field. That is what we are talking about by shaping our force.

    And so, that is what we are going to do in the next two years, as we try to be good stewards and come back to our authorized end-strength.

    At the same time, we are trying to also analyze what should our force look like in the future, not just live on the old, because as we change our force, we are going to look different in the future.

    So, as we look at the capabilities we want to project, and then where do we need blue suitors doing those capabilities?

    One of my comments in the written statement has to do with getting the right people in the right places.
 Page 119       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So we need to analyze and in the next 12 months we hope to be able to tell you and tell our nation, ''This is what our Air Force should look like. Here is where we should have blue suitors doing blue suit work.''

    And then we will have some work, that is more what I call back shop, and that might be done by civilians or contractors and then we will free up those uniforms to be in those critical career fields. And then we will move people accordingly to go into blue suit positions.

    That is shaping our force.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Let me try to meld two points and I hope I don't confuse you. And if I do, it is not your fault, it will be mine.

    But we talk about shaping the force and if you look in the recent history, you got an end-strength number, 375,000. You are now at 360,000 and you just mentioned that.

    If you go back to my question about the metrics as to how do we determine what the adequate size of the force may be to do the various missions and likely, immediate challenges, how did you come to the determination that 360,000 is the right number?

    Because if you look at it, your pressure right now, as you just noted is to be up and over and then that is not just creating a vacuum. You are doing things and you require the people to be where you are, even above the 375,000.
 Page 120       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, how do we know that 360,000 is the right answer? What makes you comfortable about that?

    And are those the same metrics you would use, as you begin to look into the future, to determine your size and your shape there as well?

    General BROWN. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. That is the most important question we have to answer I think in the next year or so.

    What is the right number? Each one of us needs to be able to tell the nation, certainly Congress, but the nation, what is the right size of each one of our forces.

    Of course, the question we have to ask in order to do that is, ''What does the Nation expect of the Air Force?'' ''What do we expect of the United States Marine Corps?''

    And as we know this is what is expected; here is the mission that is given to us, then it is our job to go size our Air Force to meet that mission.

    And if that mission is a World War III, or is it a major regional contingency, or is it X number of, ''We need to know what that mission is'' then it is up to us to size ourselves to meet that capability to go accomplish that mission.

    I think we know what the mission is, so now it is up to us to size ourselves. I will tell you the number 360,000 is the number we have had historically; it is what is programmed for the future.
 Page 121       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But we are trying today to do a capabilities-based study of our force.

    And take a look at if we need to open up so many AEFs, have so many bases, they're bases that we open up in some sort of contingency fashion, what does it take numbers of airmen to do that?

    How many airmen then, do we need to have to sustain that kind of opening around the world, sustain that back home and add up those? And what do you need to have for support for those airmen?

    That is then, how we should analyze what is the size of our Air Force.

    And we are in the midst of doing that right now. I can't tell you that the answer is 360,000, because I don't know what the answer is.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. I would rather hear that than something you are throwing a dart at on a board. I fully understand that.

    You can always when you have to, make an estimate, and you have to arrive at a number, but I think anybody who tells you that we know this is the absolute number is either kidding us or kidding themselves or both. I don't know.

    But I will tell you, I just got back, 10 days, two weeks ago, approximately from Afghanistan and saw a lot of good Marines doing great work there, gentlemen. And we thank you for that service.
 Page 122       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We spent a total of 49 hours on an airplane going over and coming back. Because they say you can't get there from here; spent a lot of time on C–130's.

    The Air Guard folks and a lot of them have been out there in a long time. And God bless them, I didn't hear one of them complain.

    But, you have to be concerned and I understand the snapshot shows, they are right now, recruiting retention, your numbers are good, but I worry about that.

    And there is not even a question there, unless you want to try to respond to it.

    I know you are concerned about it as well, but I worry that 360,000 is sufficient to not break the active, but to break the guard and reserve?

    We are hearing a lot from governors who are concerned that in the guard situation, in the case of a state emergency, a natural disaster or whatever, they don't have enough guard at their disposal because of the deployment rate.

    That is an editorialization. General McNabb, if you want to make a question out of that, I would appreciate it.

    General MCNABB. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think that is one of the things that we have been very aggressive about is looking at our future total force because that is one of the ways that you can at that 360,000 and then say, ''Okay, how do we better shape our guard, reserve, civilian force and the active duty?''
 Page 123       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    And we have been real aggressive on that and what we found is that we had to reserve associate programs in which we shared airplanes.

    So, in many cases, as I grew up in the active duty, I was trained by reserve guys on the weekend, because they had missions on the weekend and I would go fly with them.

    So, I am, kind of, used to that kind of the sharing of the assets, if you will.

    As we look to the future and the new weapons systems, C–17, FA–22, F–35 and so forth, what we want to do is make sure that we share those in the best possible way: integrated operations.

    And again, figure out ways and missions that perhaps the guard reserves are more suited for or to be able to share.

    ISR: We talked about Predator, Global Hawk's space, there is a lot of thing that they can do from the states.

    And, I was relaying to some of our folks here is when I was at the TACC, Command Tanker Airlift Control Center, our CONOPS, the guard reserve came and said, ''If you can build your concept of ops, so if I have four days of availability on a guy, he can do a mission to Europe and back, as long as he knows he can get back, he will come and volunteer for that. If he has eight days, he can do two or three shuttles.
 Page 124       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    If he can do two weeks, he just stays out there and just continues to do shuttles. And we bought our air bridge and our tanker bridge to take advantage of what the guard and reserve could do and we could do that without mobilizing.

    I would say that we have the same kind of opportunity in some of our new space stuff and our ISR stuff because we have reached back that, in the past, they didn't play a part of.

    I will talk about some of our command and control, Area of Command (AOC)s for weapon system and some of those. I think again, are really tailored to the kind of citizen, soldiers we have out there.

    But again, if we develop that concept of ops and again as we transform, we have some opportunities that we just don't want to bypass.

    And again, that is another way to try to figure out how much do we need in the active force and then how much can we share on a blended way or an integrated way?

    Mr. MCHUGH. I know, and looking at your charts, you are going to try to get rid of involuntary deployments, beginning in 2005. Certainly that is a great objective.

    I appreciate your responses and I want to apologize to my colleague from Tennessee. He has been sitting very patiently there as I am randomly spewing off my thoughts.
 Page 125       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, with my apologies to the gentleman, Mr. Cooper, and I am happy to yield to him. And take all the time you need, Jim.

    Mr. COOPER. Thank you.

    Don't scare the witnesses like that. I appreciate the chairman yielding.

    I want to talk about military to civilian conversions.

    According to the committee memo here, in the next fiscal year 2004 and 2005, we have the Marine Corps shifting about 2,100 positions in the Air Force, 4,300 positions.

    I was wondering exactly how many conversions you are contemplating in 2004 service.

    General PARKS. Sir, I will address that since you started with us.

    First, I will tell you that in the 2002 to 2007 time frame, we are already doing before this initiative started 3,019 conversions.

    We have 647 that we were already doing this year with a 1,372 that we are going to do in 2005. That will make the 2,000-plus number that you alluded to.

 Page 126       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    First of all, that money is in the budget, we are planning to do that: have it funded and do that as one of the many vowels that we, of all, just been alluding to here that we use to help us shape the direction for the future and how we free up in our case, free up Marines to do other tasks, that they haven't been able to do in the past.

    And again, we have just been talking about; there are multiple needs there.

    What is the highest priority, where is the best utilization of them and we have seen some evidence of things that have just grown out of the global war on terrorism: MPs, Explosive Ordnance Demolition people, intelligence people; those kinds of skill sets that we can use them for.

    Mr. COOPER. So, in 2004, it is 600,000 or so Marines?

    General PARKS. I want to say it is 647,000 this year, or maybe it is more than that with the 647,000 and 1,372 is the 2000 figure. But, we are on track with what the president's budget said in Plans and Budget Division (PBD) 712.

    Mr. COOPER. He said the money is in the budget?

    General PARKS. It is.

    Mr. COOPER. How much money does that take?

 Page 127       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    General PARKS. Sir, that is $48 million of 2005 and then it jumps up to $91 million in 2006.

    Mr. COOPER. How about for the Air Force?

    General BROWN. Sir, we are on track with PBD 112 and I want to say we have around 2,000 going to 4,700 over the next 3 years. It is in the budget.

    I don't know what that is, my programmer friend might know.

    General MCNABB. In the neighborhood of $400 million is kind of what——

    Mr. COOPER. What sort of positions is each service converting?

    General BROWN. It is not necessarily one-to-one, but in some cases, some career fields it might be. But mostly administrative, what again, I call ''back shop''.

    I tell you the personnel perspective we are going to convert would have been personnel military positions to a civilian or possibly contract out.

    Certainly places and agencies that are not war-fighters, they are not going to go into the front, then they are first to become MIL-CIV conversions.

 Page 128       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    So, we are taking a look at that and trying to use what we call, analysis of our core competencies. There are three things that are core.

    Mr. COOPER. Could you be more specific to the committee, perhaps in writing exactly which positions you are thinking of converting?

    General BROWN. Yes, sir, we can certainly do that.

    Mr. COOPER. Because it is one thing to liberate a Marine from a typewriter, it is another thing to consider some of these other positions.

    You mentioned, General, shaping the force.

    I think what would strike the average citizen is curious that the military is so interested in using its emergency powers to boost end-strength, when arguably there is not really an emergency.

    We have time to discuss these things and figure out whether 360,000 is the right number of needs to be adjusted.

    And I appreciate your honesty in admitting that we don't really know if it is the right number. It is just an historic number, it is a round number.

    Neither of those indicates, necessarily, the right number. And temporarily at least, 375,000 seems to be a better number, that is why you have used your stop-loss authority.
 Page 129       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    So, on the one hand, we are using emergency power in a non-emergency situation and yet, when it comes to funding our troops in the field, in Iraq and Afghanistan this fall, we are not using our power even to request a supplemental to fund their valiant service in the field, which arguably, is an emergency.

    But none of us wants to see our troops shortchanged or to see various accounts raided as we scotch tape together a budget to support our troops in the field.

    I realize it is theoretically possible to support our men and women in uniform for months without clear supplemental budgeting, but why go through that exercise?

    So, isn't this a curious situation? We are not even bringing up a supplemental to fund our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress would vote for it, let's go ahead and bring it up now.

    The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director has already given us a round number of $50 billion and that is ballpark. If it is more, we will pay for that, if it is less, maybe you will give us a refund.

    But this is a curious situation we are in.

    We have 120,000 men and women in the field, and we know the money is going to run out at the end of the fiscal year, and what do we have to offer them: the promise that we will raid every account in the Pentagon to fund their activities.
 Page 130       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Is that a proper way to run the greatest military in the history of the world?

    General MCNABB. Sir, I will take this unless somebody else wants to jump in there, I would say that the fact that we have the 2004 supplemental very early and we got that and as we looked to the future, our best shot at what 2004 was going to take and getting that out to the field has paid big dividends for us.

    I am not sure that we have an hourglass that foresees the future, from our standpoint, and as I said, that eventually as we look at operations, we are not in the same position as the other services, but as we look at it, certainly we will come forward and ask for that.

    We are not sure, our crystal ball doesn't tell us that right now, on the Air Force side, so what we would say is that we appreciate the support in 2004, got it out to the field and that was our best shot.

    But we really don't know how the events are going to unfold in Iraq, and so, that would be my best answer for you.

    Mr. COOPER. But you know it is not free and implicitly when we ask for nothing, we are assuming it is free, because none of this money is in the president's budget.

 Page 131       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    So, that assumes that the cost is zero and we know that is not true.

    So, why can't we be straightforward and have a good estimate of the costs and go ahead and fund that, so there is no risk of running out of money and no need to raid accounts in the Pentagon come the end of the fiscal year?

    Mr. MCHUGH. I think the gentleman has made his point. And the gentleman understands these are not the folks who make those decisions.

    His question has been posed to the Secretary of Defense and the service chiefs, who do make those decisions and they have answered it, believing pretty much, as General McNabb did, that they didn't want to make a request until the actual numbers were before them.

    But the gentleman is right, $50 billion: that is probably going to be about what it is.

    With all due respect and these gentlemen could respond certainly, but that is not their decision to make. But the gentleman makes his point well, as he makes all his points well.

    The gentleman have any further questions?

    Dr. Snyder?

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
 Page 132       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    Just a quick question for our two Marines there.

    And this is my ignorance, how do you all handle civil affairs? There are a number of troops that are now in Iraq and you are having to settle civil affairs function. How do you do that?

    General HULY. Yes, sir. Great question.

    We have three civil affairs groups in the Marine Corps. We use civil affairs; they are all embedded in the reserves currently. One of them stationed right here in Washington D.C. as a matter of fact.

    Our civil affairs are more geared toward tactical civil affairs groups.

    We don't have the capability nor the requirement to go out and help a country reestablish its banking system; however, we do have the capability for the local businessmen, for instance, in a city like Fallujah, to be able to help reestablish their business.

    That is the type of an individual that we attract into our civil affairs groups that capable of doing that and that is what our civil affairs are designed to do.

    Tactical level civil affairs: we have ridden these folks pretty hard and we are getting a great deal of use out of them, especially with our current deployment coming up in Iraq.
 Page 133       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    We have no shortage of volunteers to participate in this endeavor and that is the way our tactical employment of civil affairs goes.

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.

    And General Brown, maybe just more of just a comment that I will make and you can respond any way you want.

    You made the point, I think, in talking with the chairman about this issue of sizing and the size for the future and I am trying to think, and I may be a little off base with what I say, but to me, I am not as concerned about sizing as I am what you do, as you are looking ahead to the future.

    Let's suppose 10 years from now we decide we need 8,000 people who operate UAVs because we have a fleet of 2,000 UAVs there and the fighter pilots are longing for the good old days when they flew fighters.

    You know what I am saying?

    Looking ahead to the future, I am not going to lose much sleep if we happen to have 1,000 too many or 1,000 too little.

    I am more concerned that we make the right decisions that that is what we need. And that is getting back to Mr. Cooper's question, which I frankly think is very appropriate for this discussion here.
 Page 134       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    I think that I get concerned if things are not properly done through their normal system of authorizations and appropriations.

    That this is more than just a sizing issue; as Secretary Rumsfeld said, ''This is the most important transformation that has occurred in the last half century,'' in terms of the military.

    So, I think you would agree that it is——

    General BROWN. Congressman Snyder, I think you are exactly right: it is more about getting the people doing the right things than it is what size.

    Dr. SNYDER. And the right thing is not just the right thing with what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the right thing with what is happening 5 and 10 and 15 years down the road.

    General BROWN. For the future, absolutely.

    Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. MCHUGH. I would just make the point, because I would not want my colleague from Tennessee to think I was categorizing his question as inappropriate, because it is not.

 Page 135       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC
    I just meant to suggest that these gentlemen don't make those decisions and it is a very appropriate point to make and an appropriate point of discussion. I agree.

    And you didn't say it wasn't, I just wanted to make that clear.

    Dr. SNYDER. But if I might, sir, but I think these are the folks who will deal with the fact and which I think Mr. Cooper was getting at, somebody is going to come in and say, ''You need to find $4.9 million a month for the however many months.''

    Now, General Brown is not going to have to find $4.9 million, but they are going to be the ones that make the decision whose hide this comes out of.

    So, I think that that is part of this discussion that a fair number of members are concerned about, about this being outside of the normal authorization process.

    Mr. MCHUGH. If that were the question, maybe we would have a different issue, but it wasn't.

    Gentlemen, we are going to dismiss the panel because we have votes and the second bell has rung and some of us are old and we need every second to get over there.

    But, I do thank you.

    As I indicated for the first panel, there may indeed be folks who want to submit written questions for the record. We would appreciate your assistance and cooperation should that happen.
 Page 136       PREV PAGE       TOP OF DOC

    But in the meantime, thank you so much for being here and spending an afternoon with us. We appreciate it and greatly value your service and look forward to working with you.

    With that, I will adjourn the subcommittee until our next hearing next week.

    [Whereupon, at 5:22 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]